Quality management standards

Introduction

Customer satisfaction is essential for any business. Working to recognised quality management standards can help you to meet customer expectations.

Quality management standards provide a framework for a business to manage its processes and activities. They can help a business improve its efficiency by providing a best practice model for it to follow.

To meet a quality management system standard you need to set up a system to improve the key processes you use to provide your products and services - allowing you to deliver consistently on your promises.

The ISO 9000 series is the best known set of standards against which you can measure your quality management system. Achieving it could be a good investment for your business, giving you an edge over competitors. Equally, many large businesses and public sector organisations only offer lucrative contracts to suppliers with ISO 9001 certification.

This guide explains how businesses can benefit from setting up a quality management system and sets out how you can achieve certification against a quality standard.

Subjects covered in this guide

• Introduction
• What are quality management system standards and how can they benefit you?
• The ISO 9001:2008 standard
• The ISO 9004:2000 standard
• The Balanced Scorecard
• What will it cost?
• How to implement a quality system
• How to get your quality system certified
• Here's how I implemented a quality management system

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