ISO9000 is a family of standards, which provides a set of guidelines on how to develop a Quality
Management System, developed and published by the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) in 1987. This was mainly adopted from BS5750-:1979 of the British Standard
Institution. The standard has undergone two revisions: The first one in 1994 and the second one was
released on December 15, 2000. This is the current applicable version of the standard.
Since its inception the standard has become very popular worldwide. The survey of industries
conducted by ISO in 2003 indicates that up to the end of December 2003, at least 500125 ISO9001:2000
certified organizations were there in 149 countries (Ref.:www.ISO.org). According to Bureau of Indian
Standard’s web site, India had about 12000 organizations during the same period.
There are several reasons to go for the certification process. Result of 15—Economy survey (Australia,
Canada, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Phillipines, Singapore,
Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, US) of ISO9000 & ISO14000 indicates that the main motivations for
seeking ISO9000 Certification are “quality improvements” and “corporate image” and to a lesser
extent “making advantage” and “customer pressure”.1 The author’s experience in providing consultancy
services suggests that the same is true for India, especially in the case of large organizations. In addition
to the above peer pressure also seems to be a factor. In the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)
sector, the author has come across several cases where it was mostly due to pressure from the customer
that many government departments, railways and large public sector organizations put ISO 9000
certification as the qualifying criterion to take part in the tendering process. Similar views have also
been expressed by Tsim2. |
