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ISO 9000 Background Information

Customer satisfaction, profitability and market leadership are driven in large part by delivering quality products and services to customers. There is a worldwide trend towards more stringent customer expectations with regard to quality. Accompanying this trend has been a growing realization that continual improvements in quality are often necessary to achieve and sustain good economic performance. ISO - The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is the specialized international agency for standardization, at present comprising the national standards bodies of 91 countries.

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is the member body representing the United States. ISO is made up of approximately 180 Technical Committees. Each Technical Committee is responsible for one of many areas of specialization. The object of ISO is to promote the development of standardization and related world activities with a view to facilitating international exchange of goods and services and to developing cooperation in the sphere of intellectual, scientific, technological and economic activity. The results of ISO technical work are published as international standards.

In 1987, ISO published the original set of quality assurance standards commonly known as ISO 9000. The ISO Quality Management and Quality Assurance System Standards provide a set of requirements for quality assurance systems. A quality assurance system includes a company's organization, resources, policies and procedures for meeting customer requirements.

Compliance with ISO 9000 standards indicates that a producer has a basic quality assurance system in place. Increasingly, European customers expect US companies to have their quality systems registered (audited) to one of the standards of the series. This involves having an accredited independent third party conduct an on-site audit of the company's operations against the requirements of the appropriate standard.