TABLE OF CONTENTS This chapter will review the development of quality management systems and explain how customer satisfaction measurement fits into ISO 9001:2000. Specifically we will cover:
The historical origins of ISO 9000.
The components of the ISO 9001:2000 family of standards.
The customer-focused philosophy of ISO 9001:2000.
The specific requirements for customer satisfaction measurement within ISO 9001:2000.
The transition from ISO 9000:1994 to ISO 9001:2000.
As products and manufacturing processes became more complex in the years after the Second World War, there was a growing realisation of the need for systems to control quality, especially for military and other potentially dangerous products. The industrialised economies therefore began to develop their own organisations to achieve this objective by producing 'standards' to which various types of goods should be manufactured. The main national bodies, each known by their acronyms were:
AFNOR: Association Fran ais de Normalisation (France)
ANSI: American National Standards Institute (USA)
BSI: British Standards Institute (UK)
CSA: Canadian Standards Association (Canada)
DIN: Deutsch Institut fur Normung e.v. (Germany).
As consumerism grew in the 1960s and 1970s, customers became increasingly quality conscious and grew less tolerant of poor quality products. Manufacturers therefore found it helpful to be able to provide evidence that they were capable of producing good quality products and this was done by having formal third party certification of their quality management systems and procedures. The British Standards Institute with its BS 5750 standard first provided this on a large scale. The USA followed with...
