Organizations need to respect standards in order to "do the right job", i.e. manufacturing their products or services in a way that customers will agree with. That is why the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) has been created, on 23 February 1947. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. This non-governmental organization set standards that often are laws. Actually, there is a strong link between ISO and Governments.
There are many sorts of ISO standards, for mechanical domain, language, environmental management or quality management. We will study in particular the quality management standards, which belongs to the ISO9000 family. ISO9000 is a family of standard used in quality management. Before 2000, it was divided into three parts ISO9001, 9002 and 9003 which were dealing with different specific aspects; but since 2000, all of these standards are comprised in one: ISO9001.
[...] In fact, in order to facilitate the companies' accessibility to the norms, the new set of ISO9000 is made with four basic norms (About ISO/TC176): - ISO 9000: Quality management systems - Fundamentals and Vocabulary (December 15th, 2000), replaced by the 2005 version. - ISO 9001: Quality management systems - Requirements (December 15th, 2000), replaced by the next edition published in 2008. - ISO 9004: Quality management systems - Guidelines for performance improvements (December 15th, 2000), still under revision. - ISO 19011: Guidelines for quality and/or environmental management systems auditing (3rd quarter of 2002), still under revision. [...]
[...] Changes to ISO9000 in the version 2000 First of all, the ISO9000 certification has been created in order to help both product and service oriented organizations to achieve a standard of quality that is recognized throughout the world. But what is ‘quality'? Quality is degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfils requirements”, according to the ISO9000:2000 version. Before tackling the change in the last version of 2008, we need to present the major changes with the previous version of 2000. [...]
[...] The goal of the changes in the 2008 version is to stop this kind of pattern. Moreover, another change exists about the evaluation of competencies acquisition after a training period. Previously, the standard dealt with “training to satisfy needs”, but now it is more accurate and focused on the competencies: “training to acquire the necessary competencies”. The objective of this change is to insist and clarify that the final goals of the training period is to acquire some specific competencies. [...]
[...] Changes to ISO9000 in the version 2008 Each international norm must make a systematic examination to determine if it needs to review, amend or cancel this norm. The norms are often change to meet the best as possible the market evolution and needs of the companies. In October 2003, ISO made an examination of the norm ISO9001:2000 and decided to make an amendment of the norm ISO9001. From the first version of 1987 to the 2000 version, the evolution was positive but several years after the publication of 2000 version, there were some problems of application of this norm, some problems of comprehension, a focus too important in the managerial demands (impact of the Top management implication in the approach), and all of this at the expense of the operational demand. [...]
[...] This is one of the means to be used in evaluating the performance of the quality management system. Unlike the 1994 version, the 2000 version has a positive approach which requires assurance of conformity of the product rather than the negative approach, which is the prevention of nonconformity. Internal communication: There is now a requirement for an organization to have an internal communication process to provide information on the quality management system and its effectiveness. The executive management has to ensure that it is properly implemented. [...]
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