The ISO 9000 – Quality Management Family

The ISO 9000 – Quality Management Family

The ISO 9000 family addresses various aspects of quality management and contains some of ISO’s best known standards. The standards provide guidance and tools for companies and organizations who want to ensure that their products and services consistently meet customer’s requirements, and that quality is consistently improved.

There are many standards in the ISO 9000 family, including:

  • ISO 9001:2008 – sets out the requirements of a quality management system
  • ISO 9000:2005 – covers the basic concepts and language
  • ISO 9004:2009 – focuses on how to make a quality management system more efficient and effective
  • ISO 19011:2011 – sets out guidance on internal and external audits of quality management systems.

ISO 9001:2008 sets out the criteria for a quality management system and is the only standard in the family that can be certified to (although this is not a requirement). It can be used by any organization, large or small, regardless of its field of activity. In fact ISO 9001:2008 is implemented by over one million companies and organizations in over 170 countries.

Quality Management Principles - The standard is based on a number of quality management principles including a strong customer focus, the motivation and implication of top management, the process approach and continual improvement.

Using ISO 9001:2008 helps ensure that customers get consistent, good quality products and services, which in turn brings many business benefits.

Audits – Checking that the system works is a vital part of ISO 9001:2008. An organization must perform internal audits to check how its quality management system is working. An organization may decide to invite an independent certification body to verify that it is in conformity to the standard, but there is no requirement for this. Alternatively, it might invite its clients to audit the quality system for themselves.

Preview ISO 9001:2008 – You can preview the freely available sections of ISO 9001:2008 on ISO’s Online Browsing Platform.

ISO 9001 Revision – ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems is under review and an updated version is expected by the end of 2015. All ISO standards are reviewed every 5 years to make sure they remain as helpful and relevant.