Standards of Managing Quality - ISO Standards

Standards of Managing Quality - ISO Standards

Introduction

Quality management is one of the most important functions for an organization, where the organization has to ensure that it has delivered the best products to its end consumers. For this, standards have been developed, and the organizations who have registered with ISO have to comply with the rules and policies herewith. The following paper discusses the standards in detail.

Discussion

ISO 9000 standards

The ISO 9000 standards are related to the quality management systems. These are designed in order to help the organizations make sure that they are efficiently meeting the needs of requirements of their customers as well as their stakeholders and at the same time meet the regulatory and statutory requirements which are related directly or indirectly to the product. Almost all of the standards are published by the ISO, that is, International Organization for Standardization. ISO 9000 generally deals with the basics of the quality management system which also includes the eight principles of management on which the entire family of the standards depends. ISO 9000 also deals with those requirements which all those organizations have to fulfill that wish to meet the required standards (www.iso.org). Apart from this, third party certification offers an independent confirmation regarding whether the organizations meet the specified requirements in accordance with the standards of ISO 9000 or not. More than a million organizations all over the world are independently certified, which makes ISO 9000 among the most used tool of management all over the world. However, in spite of it very widespread usage, there has been much criticism regarding the ISO such as sometimes it is wasteful and it does not cater the needs of all the organizations.

The question now arises that what is standard and how to decide upon it. A standard is basically a specification which could be recognized easily within an organization. It is that process or a product against which a specification could be a measured in order to establish the conclusion that whether that product or process meets the established standard or not (www.iso.org). The organization might consist of few people only or also of thousands of people, or an industry consisting of millions of people or a country of billions. But the most important and long lasting standards are those which an organization develops itself in order to gain better coordination.

ISO 9000 is known for providing meta-standard. It means that all those organizations that would like to be recognized for the level of its quality which is being used in the daily processes and the products that is being created and maintained. The manner in which the meta-standard has developed is quite similar and relatable in principle to those ways which are generally developed within the bounds of an organization.

Other than that, typically some of the universities and other educational institutes work in order to establish the standards that are usually created by some groups of various professors and then also certified by some other group of ...