ISO
ISO's Role in developing standards
The International Standards Organisation (ISO) launches the development of new standards in response to sectors and stakeholders that express a clearly established need for them.
An industry sector or other stakeholder group typically communicates its requirement for a standard to one of ISO's national members. The latter then proposes the new work item to the relevant ISO technical committee developing standards in that area. New work items may also be proposed by organizations in liaison (see below) with such committees. When work items do not relate to existing committees, proposals may also be made by ISO members to set up new technical committees to cover new fields of activity.
To be accepted for development, a proposed work item must receive the majority support of the participating members of the ISO technical committee which, amongst other criteria, verifies the "global relevance" of the proposed item – this means that it indeed responds to an international need and will eventually be suitable for implementation on as broad a basis as possible worldwide.
ISO 9000 family of standards
The ISO 9000 family addresses "Quality management". Quality management is what the organization does to fulfil:
- the customer's quality requirements, and
- applicable regulatory requirements, while aiming to
- enhance customer satisfaction, and
- achieve continual improvement of its performance in pursuit of these objectives.
ISO 9000 essentials
This section concisely describes the essential features of the ISO 9000 family. The ISO 9000 family of standards represents an international consensus on good quality management practices. It consists of standards and guidelines relating to quality management systems and related supporting standards.
ISO 9001:2008 is the standard that provides a set of standardized requirements for a quality management system, regardless of what the user organization does, its size, or whether it is in the private, or public sector. It is the only standard in the family against which organizations can be certified – although certification is not a compulsory requirement of the standard.
The other standards in the family cover specific aspects such as fundamentals and vocabulary, performance improvements, documentation, training, and financial and economic aspects.