Quality management standards
The vast majority of ISO’s International Standards were highly specific to a particular product, material, or process. However, during the 1980s, ISO entered into new areas of work, destined to have enormous impact on organizational practices and trade.
The history of industrialization has seen many standards dealing with quality issues.
A famous example concerns the military field: during the two world wars, a high percentage of bullets and bombs went off in the factories themselves in the course of manufacturing. In an effort to curb such causalities, the United Kingdom’s ministry of defense appointed inspectors in the factories to supervise the production process.
In the USA, quality standards for military procurement were introduced at the end of the 1950s. During the 1960s, NASA developed its quality system requirements for suppliers and NATO accepted the AQAP (allied quality assurance procedures) specifications for the procurement of equipment.
In the 1970s, many major organizations (private and governmental) published their own quality management standards, which introduced the idea that confidence in a product could be gained from an approved quality management system and quality manuals. The Canadian CSA Z 299 series of standards were issued in the mid-1970s and the British standard BS 5750 was issued in 1979. In December 1979, the USA issued ANSI/ASQC Z-1.15, Generic Guidelines for quality systems.
Whilst the increase in international trade stimulated the development of internationally-recognized quality management standards, it was feared that a variety of different national standards would be a barrier to international trade.
The ISO technical committee (TC) 176, Quality management and quality assurance, was therefore established in 1979. The first standard issued by ISO/TC 176 was ISO 8402 (in 1986), which standardized quality management terminology. It was followed in 1987 by ISO 9001, ISO 9002 and ISO 9003, which provided the requirements for quality management systems operated by organizations with varying scopes of activity, from those including an R&D function, to those uniquely carrying out service and maintenance., These standards were completed by ISO 9004, providing guidance on quality management systems..
This accomplishment marked the beginning of a long journey - with the ISO 9000 family of standards set to become the most widely known standards ever.
- Management standards - understand the basics
- ISO 9000:2000 - business as usual...or a real challenge? by David Hoyle and John Thompson (PDF, 804 kB)
News feeds
