ISO Standards Go Beyond ISO 9000

While ISO has some generally well known quality management standards like ISO 9000 and ISO14001, and they have very specific standards for producing products:

• ISO 500- rear-mounted power take-off units for agricultural tractors
• ISO 639 which covers codes for the representation of names of languages

But they also provide supporting standards for management systems.

The Other Sides Of ISO Standards

The International Standards Organization (ISO) has manysupporting standards which are used in conjunction with the ISO 9000 series. While some are more specific, the emphasis on many is to bring forth in a business environment, the best practices for producing consistently quality services and products.

What other standards relate to the ISO 9000 quality family?

Other ISO quality standards were created to support the ISO 9000 family, and not all start with ISO 9xxx.

• ISO 10000 Series of Standards – (apply to specific clauses in ISO 9001)
• Industry Specific Applications of ISO 9001
  • ISO 15161 (2001) Guidelines on the ISO 9001 for Food & Drink Industries
  • ISO 16106 (2006) Packaging – Applying 9001 to Transport Dangerous Goods
  • ISO 13485 – ISO 9001 for medical devices
  • ISO/TS16949 – ISO 9001 for automotive industry
  • AS9100 – ISO 9001 for Aircraft, Space and Defense
• ISO 14001 Environmental Management System
• ISO 15489-1 (2001) Information & Doc’s-Records Management -Part 1: General
• ISO 15489-2 (2001) Information & Doc’s-Records Management -Part 2: Guidelines
• ISO 19011 (2011) Guidelines for quality management systems auditing
  • Learn about ISO 19011
• ISO 90003 (2004) Software Engineering – Application of ISO 9001 to Software
• Etc.

ISO Standards Development Review or download this presentation for information on the supporting standards and an idea of what goes into standards development.

Example: ISO/IEC 90003:2004 for Software

If you’ve been certified under ISO 9001, it states a need help control software quality since it drives so many of the operations that the general standard covers. But the ISO community felt the standard needed more specificity, so enter ISO/IEC 90003. It helps explain how to ensure the quality levels for software that:

• Must be provided as part of a contract deliverable with a customer, partner or even supplier organization
• Software that is a product to be sold directly or indirectly to customers that you produce, or perhaps modify or just resell
• Internal software that is used primarily to help run the operations of an organization
• Software that is embedded as an operating system or application
• Services that support software production, updates and distribution

The value of ISO/IEC 90003:2004 is that it is not tied to a specific software type, platform or application. It really promotes good general use and practices with respect to ensuring software quality, consistency and control. This is even amid the dizzying changes and updates and the myriad of ways it can and will be used. It’s sort of a port of best practices in the storm of software change.