ISO 9000: Encyclopedia II - ISO 9000 - History

ISO 9000 - History

In World War II, United Kingdom, Britain had a serious problem with bombs going off in the weapons factories. In an attempt to solve the problem, the Ministry of Defense placed inspectors in the factories.

To supply to the Government, a company had to write up the procedure for making their product, have the procedure inspected by the Ministry and ensure their workers followed these procedures.

This, and similar problems in the nuclear/power industries over the following decades, were signs of rapid technological advance in manufacturing. Advances in science were pushed into manufacturing too fast to be properly managed. Furthermore, managers were seen as too often basing decisions on paper reports rather than on understanding what was happening on the factory floor.

In 1959, the United States developed Quality Program Requirements, a quality standard for military procurement, detailing what suppliers had to do to achieve conformance. By 1962, NASA had similarly developed Quality System Requirements for its suppliers. In 1968, NATO adopted the AQAP (Allied Quality Assurance Procedures) specifications for the procurement of NATO equipment.

The idea of quality assurance spread beyond the military. In 1966, the United Kingdom Government led the first national campaign for quality and reliability with the slogan "Quality is everybody's business." In 1969, the UK and Canada developed quality assurance standards for suppliers.

By this time, suppliers were being assessed by any number of their customers. It was widely recognized that this was a very wasteful duplication of effort. In 1969, a UK committee report on the subject recommended that suppliers' methods should be assessed against a generic standard of quality assurance.

In 1971, the British Standard Institute published the first UK standard for quality assurance, BS 9000, which was developed for the electronics industry. In 1974, BSI published BS 5179, Guidelines for Quality Assurance.

In order to shift the burden of inspection from the customer, quality assurance was guaranteed by the supplier through third-party inspection.

Through the 1970s, BSI organized meetings with industry to set a common standard. The result was BS 5750 in 1979. Key industry bodies agreed to drop their own standards and use it instead. The purpose of BS 5750 was to provide a common contractual document, demonstrating that industrial production was controlled.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki