FREE online courses on Quality Management System - Quality Management System Standards

 

Recognizing the importance of quality system, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has developed a series of standards, which is popular as ISO 9000. These international standards were jointly developed by all ISO member countries and are being adopted throughout the world.

 

The ISO 9000 is a series of standards on Quality Management System, which can be adopted by all types of organizations belonging to the government, public, private or joint sectors, producing and supplying all kinds of goods, services and software.  These standards are generic, not specific to any particular product and can be used for managing the quality of outputs of manufacturing and service industries. 

 

These standards were published for the first time in the year 1987, with the goal of effectively documenting the quality management system requirements to be implemented in order to attain customer satisfaction. Implementation of ISO 9000 quality management system guides in building quality into the product and/or services by prevention of quality deficiencies during design, production, installation and servicing processes itself, instead of costly post-production inspections, warranty claims and rework.

 

These standards were revised for the first time in the year 1994. Based on actual experiences of several thousand companies, these standards are being further revised to come with an improved version in the year 2000. The latest revision would contain following three main standards:

 

                                               

 

Standard	Title	Scope
ISO 9000:2000	Quality Management Systems	Provides fundamentals of quality management system and specifies quality management
ISO 9001:2000	Quality Management Systems Requirements	Specifies requirements for a quality management system where an organization needs to demonstrate its capability to meet customer requirements for product and/or services and assessment of that capability by internal and external parties.
ISO 9004:2000	Quality Management Systems-Guidance for performance Improvement	Provides guidance on quality management systems as a means for continual improvement of processes that contribute to the satisfaction of organization's customers and other interested parties.

 

 

ISO 9001: 2000 would replace the three standards of previous revision ISO 9001:1994, ISO 9002: 1994 and ISO 9003:1994

 

To attain ISO 9001 registration, the organization has to document its processes and systems according to the requirements of the standard and must provide objective evidence that it is performing all quality-related activities as per documented system the and should ensure that its management is effectively involved in quality process by participation with suppliers and customers. Documented quality management system is designed to ensure that all mutually determined requirements are understood and consistently met and that the text of the company's internal procedures ensures that serious attention is given to customer service and product quality.

 

The ISO 9000 standards also require that a company maintains control over its documented procedures that describe its methods for design, production, inspection, handling, storage and delivery of all materials and products, as well as defining the system that ensures continuous employee training and development.

 

In order to obtain registration, a company's quality management system has to be continually assessed by an accredited third party assessment agency.