ISO 9001:2008 is an international standard.
It is one of the most widely known and the basis
of many highly effective quality systems. the standard
can be applied to any size of company or organization,
any industry and any country, for both services
and products. the standard itself consists of a
set of requirements. These requirements specify
what a company must do but now how to do it. The
ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System certification
eanbles you to demonstrate your commitment to quality
and customer satisfaction, as well as continuously
improving your quality systems and integrating the
realities of a changing world
The international organization for standardization
(ISO) has reviewed ISO 9000 standards of version
1994 for a group of reasons which include:
-
Its ISO rules that international Standards
should be reviewed each 5 years.
-
The increasing focus and demand on meeting
customer needs and other stakeholders (owners, employees,
suppliers…). and the increasing demand towards
performance excellence
-
The need to have consistency and compatibility
with other management standards such as ISO 14000
standards
Besides problems with the old version of ISO 9000 (1994) standards such as wording, not process oriented, not easy to use and implement by small enterprises.
Accordingly the ISO issued new standards
of ISO 9000 in December 2000, and a transition period was given
till 15 December 2003 for previously certified companies according
to the old standards (ISO9001, ISO9002. ISO9003:1994)
The changes to the standard have taken
into account the above findings and allow organizations to focus
on the processes that are essential to their operations.
ISO 9000:2008 series
The series comprises of:
-
ISO 9000 Quality Management
Systems - Fundamentals and vocabulary (this supersedes
ISO 8402 and ISO 9000 - 1).
-
ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems
- Requirements (supersedes the 1994 year version of ISO
9001, 9002, 9003.)
-
ISO 9004 Quality Management Systems
- Guidelines for performance improvement (this supersedes
ISO 9004 - 1)
-
ISO 19011 Guidelines on auditing
quality and environmental management systems (supersedes
the ISO10011-1/2/3, ISO 14010, ISO14011.ISO14012)
ISO 9000 series was established in accordance with the 8 quality principles which include:
The ISO 9001:2008 standard
It's the requirement standard which
was issued to assess an organization ability to meet customers
and applicable regulatory requirements and accordingly it is
the only standard in ISO 9000 series that certification from
3rd party can be obtained for conformance with.
The requirements contain little that
any well run, successful organization is not already doing either
formally or informally. The revisions contained in the standard
are therefore attempting to ensure approval really means something
and is of recognizable value.
Terminology and definitions used in
ISO 9001:2008 are contained in ISO 9000:2008 which also includes
the concepts on which the standard has been developed.
ISO 9001:2008 Standard is organized in five main clauses which include:
-
Clause 4 :Quality management system
-
Clause 5 : Management responsibility
-
Clause 6 : Resources management
-
Clause 7: Product realization
-
Clause 8 : Measurement and analysis and improvement
