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Concept of quality - historical background
The concept of quality as we think of it now first emerged out of the Industrial Revolution. Previously goods had been made from start to finish by the same person or team of people, with handcrafting and tweaking the product to meet 'quality criteria'. Mass production brought huge teams of people together to work on specific stages of production where one person would not necessarily complete a product from start to finish. In the late 19th century pioneers such as Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford recognized the limitations of the methods being used in mass production at the time and the subsequent varying quality of output. Birland established Quality Departments to oversee the quality of production and rectifying of errors, and Ford emphasized standardization of design and component standards to ensure a standard product was produced. Management of quality was the responsibility of the Quality department and was implemented by Inspection of product output to 'catch' defects.
Application of statistical control came later as a result of World War production methods, and were advanced by the work done of W. Edwards Deming, a statistician, after whom the Deming Prize for quality is named. Joseph M. Juran focused more on managing for quality. The first edition of Juran's Quality Control Handbook was published in 1951. He also developed the "Juran's trilogy," an approach to cross-functional management that is composed of three managerial processes: quality planning, quality control and quality improvement. These functions all play a vital role when evaluating quality.
Quality, as a profession and the managerial process associated with the quality function, was introduced during the second-half of the 20th century, and has evolved since then. Over this period, few other disciplines have seen as many changes as the quality profession.
The quality profession grew from simple control, to engineering, to systems engineering. Quality control activities were predominant in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The 1970s were an era of quality engineering and the 1990s saw quality systems as an emerging field. Like medicine, accounting, and engineering, quality has achieved status as a recognized profession[ citation needed ] Reference American Society for Quality (ASQ) Certified Quality Engineer (CQE) http://prdweb.asq.org/certification/control/quality-engineer/index
Quality management organizations and awards
The International Organization for Standardization's ISO 9001:2008 series describes standards for a QMS addressing the principles and processes surrounding the design, development and delivery of a general product or service. Organizations can participate in a continuing certification process to ISO 9001:2008 to demonstrate their compliance with the standard, which includes a requirement for continual (i.e. planned) improvement of the QMS, as well as more foundational QMS components such as failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA).[ citation needed ]
(ISO 9000:2005 provides information the fundamentals and vocabulary used in quality management systems. ISO 9004:2009 provides guidance on quality management approach for the sustained success of an organization. Neither of these standards can be used for certification purposes as they provide guidance, not requirements).
The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program educates organizations in performance excellence management and administers the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The Baldrige Award recognizes U.S. organizations for performance excellence based on the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. The Criteria address critical aspects of management that contribute to performance excellence: leadership; strategic planning; customers; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; the workforce; operations; and results.
The European Foundation for Quality Management's EFQM Excellence Model supports an award scheme similar to the Baldrige Award for European companies.
In Canada, the National Quality Institute presents the 'Canada Awards for Excellence' on an annual basis to organisations that have displayed outstanding performance in the areas of Quality and Workplace Wellness, and have met the Institute's criteria with documented overall achievements and results.
The Alliance for Performance Excellence is a network of state and local organizations that use the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria at the grassroots level to improve the performance of local organizations and economies. browsers can find Alliance members in their state and get the latest news.
II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization (French: Organisation internationale de normalisation, Russian: Международная организация по стандартизации, tr. Myezhdunarodnaya organizatsiya po standartizatsii),[1] widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial, and commercial standards. It has its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.[2]
Name and abbreviation
The three official languages of the ISO are English, French, and Russian.[3] The organization's logos in two of its official languages, English and French, include the word ISO, and it is usually referred to by this short-form name. The organization states that ISO is not an acronym or initialism for the organization's full name in any official language.[ citation needed ] Recognizing that its initials would be different in different languages, the organization adopted ISO, based on the Greek word isos (ἴσος, meaning equal), as the universal short form of its name.[4] However, one of the founding delegates, Willy Kuert, recollected the original naming question with the comment: "I recently read that the name ISO was chosen because 'iso' is a Greek term meaning 'equal'. There was no mention of that in London!"[5]
History
The organization today known as ISO began in 1926 as the International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations (ISA), whose focus was mainly mechanical engineering.[6] It was disbanded in 1942 during World War II but was reorganized under its current name, ISO, in 1946, when delegates from 25 countries met at the Institute of Civil Engineers in London; the new organization officially began operations in February 1947.[2]
ISO is a voluntary organization whose members are recognized authorities on standards, each one representing one country. The bulk of the work of ISO is done by the 2,700 technical committees, subcommittees, and working groups. Each committee and subcommittee is headed by a Secretariat from one of the member organizations.[ citation needed ]
Financing
ISO is funded by a combination of:[7][8]
- Organizations that manage the specific projects or loan experts to participate in the technical work.
- Subscriptions from member bodies ("the national body most representative of standardization in its country").[9] These subscriptions are in proportion to each country's gross national product and trade figures.
- Sale of standards.
International Standards and other publications
See also: List of International Organization for Standardization standards
ISO's main products are international standards. ISO also publishes technical reports, technical specifications, publicly available specifications, technical corrigenda, and guides.[10][11]
International standards are designated with the format ISO[/IEC] [/ASTM] [IS] nnnnn[-p]:[yyyy] Title, where nnnnn is the number of the standard, p is an optional part number, yyyy is the year published, and Title describes the subject. IEC for International Electrotechnical Commission is included if the standard results from the work of ISO/IEC JTC1 (the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee). ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) is used for standards developed in cooperation with ASTM International. The date and IS are not used for an incomplete or unpublished standard and may under some circumstances be left off the title of a published work.
Technical reports are issued when a technical committee or subcommittee has collected data of a different kind from that normally published as an International Standard.[10] such as references and explanations. The naming conventions for these are the same as for standards, except TR prepended instead of IS in the report's name. Examples:
- ISO/IEC TR 17799:2000 Code of Practice for Information Security Management
- ISO/TR 19033:2000 Technical product documentation — Metadata for construction documentation
Technical specifications can be produced when "the subject in question is still under development or where for any other reason there is the future but not immediate possibility of an agreement to publish an International Standard". Publicly Available Specifications may be "an intermediate specification, published prior to the development of a full International Standard, or, in IEC may be a 'dual logo' publication published in collaboration with an external organization".[10] Both are named by convention similar to Technical Reports, for example:
- ISO/TS 16952-1:2006 Technical product documentation — Reference designation system — Part 1: General application rules
- ISO/PAS 11154:2006 Road vehicles — Roof load carriers
ISO sometimes issues technical corrigenda. Corrigenda (plural of corrigendum) are amendments to existing standards because of minor technical flaws, usability improvements, or limited applicability extensions. Generally, these are issued with the expectation that the affected standard will be updated or withdrawn at its next scheduled review.[10]
ISO Guides are meta-standards covering "matters related to international standardization".[10] They are named in the format "ISO[/IEC] Guide N:yyyy: Title", for example:
- ISO/IEC Guide 2:2004 Standardization and related activities — General vocabulary
- ISO/IEC Guide 65:1996 General requirements for bodies operating product certification
