Introduction
The roots of The International Standards Organisation (ISO) can be traced all the way back to World War 2, where demand for better safety standards within the factories that were developing explosive devices appeared. The ISO 9000, or BS 5750 series of standards as it was once known, was introduced in 1979, meaning businesses had to comply with strict production procedures. The requirements of the standard were primarily based around those of the MoD.
The ISO 9001 standard, built on these original guidelines, was formally introduced in 1987 as many companies became increasingly frustrated with the original BS 5750 guidelines. This is because the original guidelines were specifically geared towards manufacturing businesses, meaning they were a poor fit for a number of other types of companies and industries.
ISO 9001 was then created to address these issues and offer a universal framework for quality management that all businesses and industries could adhere to. The ISO 9001 was designed to be product and industry-friendly, the ever-changing and evolving nature of the business world meant that there was a need for further updates and revisions.
1994
The first of these revisions came in 1994, where the ISO’s intention was to move the focus of the original standard to quality management systems (QMS) that monitored and checked products at every stage involved in creating them instead of only checking them at the finished stage. This change focused on quality assurance using anticipatory actions, rather than correcting any created issues. QMS, in essence, moved from a ‘cure’ to ‘prevention’ state.
2000
In 2000, ISO 9001 was once again changed. The purpose this time was to simplify the processes and documentation involved so that companies will be less burdened with quality control procedures if they didn’t actually produce new products. Another aim of this revision was to increase the involvement of upper management in order to integrate quality control throughout the entirety of the business, connecting all levels of company hierarchy. The final goal of this update was to increase effectiveness through the use of process performance metrics, where continual process improvement and the monitoring of customer satisfaction became paramount.
2008
The changes to ISO 9001 that were seen in 2008 were minor in comparison to previous changes. In this part of the ISO 9001's history, clearer clarifications were made to existing standards to enhance the consistency with other ISO standards (ISO 14001), without introducing new requirements.
Latest Revision in 2015
The most recent change in ISO 9001 history came in 2015 after it was decided that a new QMS model for the next 25 years had to be created. As a result of this, work on created a new version if ISO 9001 began, starting with updated quality management principles. The change came not with the scope of the standard, but rather the core terms, to allow greater integration with other international management systems. This update also made the standard less prescriptive than previous versions, focusing much more on performance.
This was accomplished by incorporating a process approach with risk-based thinking. Communication was a made a key area with the change, with the need for a quality representative eliminated, there is much more emphasis placed on everyone within the business having an influence in the development and maintenance of the QMS.
The standard is now seen as an ever-evolving document, being continually edited and updated with input from a number of trade committees and organisations with quality management know-how from across the globe, in order to stay as relevant to worldwide businesses as possible.
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