ISO is an international organization for standardization that started its operations in 1946. It is composed of many representatives from national standards associations in over 160 countries. Its role is to standardize industrial, commercial, and computer standards. The organization issues out guides, technical specifications, and reports.
According to Santos (2002), ISO standards have given industrial, economic, and societal gain. In businesses suppliers can produce goods that meet the standards. These goods are accepted all around the globe since they have passed the international standard.
For customers, they benefit from wide range of items from different countries so long as they have passed through the international standard. The consumers are assured of the quality and reliability. For the developing countries, ISO has helped them to have technological knowledge, especially on measuring the products for export and thus, they have no fear of loss while exporting them.
Heizer & Render (2011) argue that the standard gives an assurance on the quality of life for everyone since it ensures that all the equipments and machinery are harmless. The whole world has benefitted from ISO because it has standards, which regulate environmental preservation. In environmental conservation, the standards ensure that air, water, and soil are not damaged through the release of harmful chemicals.
In this regard, the ISO 9000 family of standards has received a positive acceptance throughout the globe with over 200,000 companies being certified to it. In every month more than 1,000 companies request for registration. The main reason as to why these countries adopt ISO 9000 is to reduce competitive pressure.
Many companies in the European Union has adopted the ISO standard, and those in the United Kingdom as well. The EU first set up a European Council for Standization (CEN) which later adopted the ISO 9000 which is also know as EN 29000. The products such as medical equipments, industrial tools communications equipments and construction items in EU have to be certified.
Nevertheless, trade schools curriculum In EU has ISO 9000 as part of study. American Standards Institute, which collaborates with American Quality Control, has also accepted ISO 9000; business-oriented companies use the standard, and thus it is referred to as ANSI/ASQU Q-90 (Santos, 2002).
In business, ISO 9000 (2000) emphasizes on checking whether customer need are being met. For this reason, process control, checking and examining devices, training, communication, working environment and legal controls are much emphasized.
This series contains three standards of quality management, which stresses on performance improvement, requirements, and fundamentals: it incorporates ISO 9000:2000, ISO 90001:2000, and ISO 9004:2000 (ISO, 2011). The version has more user-friendly documents and promotes use of basic quality management principles by companies that improves on their compatibility with latest versions like ISO 14001.
In essence, the main basic principles of latest version of ISO 9000 include customer focus, where organizations are supposed to emphasize more on customer needs; Leadership is a principle where an organization is supposed to provide leaders who set its direction; and Involving people is a principle that insists that organizations should encourage involvement of team members at all levels.
Similarly, taking a systems approach is a principle, which helps to combine related processes. Another principle is encouraging continual improvement in the organization through teams’ commitment. The last two principles emphasizes on getting the facts before organizations decide and working with suppliers.
References
Heizer, J., & Render, B. (2011). Operations management (10th ed.). Boston, MA: Prentice-Hall.
ISO. (2011). ISO 9000 Essentials. Web.
Santos, L. (2002). Benefits of the ISO 9000:1994 system: Some consideration to reinforce competitive advantage. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 19(3), 321–344.