Overview of chapter 2
We often come across terms like quality management, quality control, quality assurance in our daily lives. Most often, we understand clearly what these terms mean but with no standards for comparison these terms can be confusing. One of the principle quality initiatives used in almost every country in the world today is ISO 9000. In this chapter we will discuss the background of this standard and its usefulness in assuring quality to the customer. The ISO 9000 series of standards are called quality system standards. Their use is supposed to indicate that the organisation that is certified (or accredited) to this standard complies with certain declared characteristics of management, and the output of this organisation is a result of well designed, documented and standardised processes. It is believed that these processes will provide the confidence among customers that their expectations and requirements will be met.
We will also look at some of the criticism, or weaknesses, of ISO 9000.
Topics
The topics to be studied in this chapter are:
- 2.1 The genesis of ISO 9000
- 2.2 QA as a system
- 2.3 The ISO 9000 series
The nature of standards - 2.4 The path to accreditation
1 Development
2 Implementation
3 Maintaining the system - 2.5 The role of Quality Assurance
Learning outcomes
When you have completed this chapter, you should be able to:
- understand the concept of quality assurance;
- discuss the role of standards in quality assurance.
