Emergence of sector requirements

As a set of minimum standards, ISO 9000 addresses the business community. It was intended for purchasers as a means for them to obtain products and services of consistent quality from their suppliers. In place of purchaser-specified general quality management requirements, ISO 9000 became the common requirement and hence eliminated the need for such requirements. As a consequence, it provides suppliers that meet its requirements with a demonstrable capability that others may not possess and hence such capability becomes a persuasive marketing tool that will increase market share. ISO 9000 was also intended for application to all types of industry and therefore did not contain requirements for any specific industry sector or type of products or services. Partially due to the scope of misinterpretation and the degree to which particular industries have common supplier requirements, certain industry sectors perceived the need for harmonizing such requirements in a form that added to those requirements in ISO 9000. 

The drive for these additional requirements has come not from the suppliers but from users, such as the automotive, utilities, telecommunications, software, and aerospace industries which purchase millions of products and services used to produce the goods and services they provide to the consumer. Rather than invoke customer-specific conditions in each contract, the larger purchasers perceive real benefits from agreeing common quality system requirements for their industry sector. Quite often a supplier will be supplying more than one customer in a particular sector and hence costs increase for both the supplier and the customer if the supplier has to meet different requirements that serve the same objective. All customers desire products and services that consistently/ meet their requirements. While the physical and functional requirements for the product or service will differ, the requirements governing the manner in which their quality is to be achieved, controlled, and assured need not differ. Differences in quality system requirements may arise between industry sectors where the technology, complexity, and risks are different. 

There are those who see the emergence of sector standards as a retrograde step, having reached the stage where we have condensed all the world s national quality system standards into one group of 20 standards. Those following the development of ISO 9000 will already be aware that the 20 standards in the ISO 9000 family are soon to be reduced to four (ISO 9000, ISO 9001, ISO 9004, and a replacement for ISO 10011). It 

Until ISO 9000 emerged in 1987, the automotive industry used a variety of customer-specific standards to govern a supplier s quality management practices. 

Prior to the publication of ISO 9000, several nations had developed national quality system standards, with many used only in the procurement of military equipment. With the emergence of the NATO Quality Control System standards in 1973, the Quality Panel of the UK Society of Motor Manufacturers set out to develop an equivalent standard for non-military applications. The result was BS 4891, which was published in 1972. In 1974 this was followed by BS 5179 with the title Operation and Evaluation of Quality Assurance Systems. However, BS 5179 was intended only as a guide and it was not until 1979, with the publication of BS 5750, that major purchasers in the UK had a standard that could be invoked in contracts. A certification scheme was eventually established in 1983, following the UK government s white paper on competitiveness  

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