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We can define quality as a measure of excellence or a state of being free from defects, deficiencies and significant variations. Quality can be brought about by strict and consistent commitment to defined standards in order to achieve uniformity of a product to satisfy specific customer or user requirements.
Quality is primarily linked to the business/service processes used by any organization. Any process involves transforming a set of inputs into outputs in order to satisfy the needs of the customer and their expectations, in the form of products, information or services. Here, each process in each department or area can be analyzed by investigating the inputs and outputs for further improvements. Hence, at every supplier or customer interface resides a transformation process such that every single task throughout an organization must be viewed as a process in this way.
ISO standards
In 1987 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) created the Quality Management System (QMS). They included the ISO 9000:1987 series of standards comprising ISO 9001:1987, ISO 9002:1987 and ISO 9003:1987; that were applicable in different types of industries, based on the type of activity or process: designing, production or service delivery.
These standards are reviewed after every few years by the International Organization for Standardization. The version in 1994 was called the ISO 9000:1994 series; consisting of the ISO 9001:1994, 9002:1994 and 9003:1994 versions.
The last revision was made in the year 2008 and the series was called ISO 9000:2000 series. The ISO 9002 and 9003 standards were integrated into one single certifiable standard: ISO 9001:2000. After December 2003, organizations holding ISO 9002 or 9003 standards had to complete a transition to the new standard.
A minor revision was released by ISO as, ISO 9001:2008 on 14 October 2008. It contains no new requirements. Many of the changes were to improve consistency in grammar, facilitating translation of the standard into other languages for use by over 950,000 certified organization in the 175 countries (as at Dec 2007) that use the standard.
The ISO 9004:2009 document gives guidelines for performance improvement over and above the basic standard (ISO 9001:2000). This standard provides a measurement framework for improved quality management, similar to and based upon the measurement framework for process assessment.
The primary objective of the Quality Management System created by ISO is to certify the processes and the system of an organization, and not the product or service itself. At no point ISO 9000 standards certify the quality of the product or service.
In the year 2005, the International Organization for Standardization released a standard, by the name ISO 22000, which was meant for the food industry. The ISO 22000 standard covers the values and principles of ISO 9000 and the HACCP standards which gives one single integrated standard for the food industry and is expected to become more popular in the coming years in such industry.
ISO has also released standards for other industries. For example, Technical Standard TS 16949 defines requirements in addition to those in ISO 9001:2008 specifically for the automotive industry.
ISO has released a number of standards that support quality management where one group describes processes (including ISO/IEC 12207 and ISO/IEC 15288) and another describes process assessment and improvement ISO 15504.
CMMI and IDEAL methods
Software Engineering Institute have their own process assessment and improvement methods, known as CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) and IDEAL respectively.
Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)
It is a process improvement training and appraisal program and service that has been administered and marketed by Carnegie Mellon University and required by many DOD and U.S. Government contracts, especially in software development. CMMI can also be used to guide process improvement across a project, division, or an entire organization. According to the CMMI methodology, processes are rated according to their maturity levels – Such as Initial, Managed, Defined, Quantitatively Managed, Optimizing.
Three primary constellations of CMMI
- CMMI for Development – Product and service development
- CMMI for Services – Service establishment, management, and delivery
- CMMI for Acquisition – Product and service acquisition
In November, 2010 CMMI Version 1.3 was released which updated all three CMMI models (CMMI for Development, CMMI for Services, and CMMI for Acquisition) in order to make them consistent as well as improve their high maturity practices. As part of its mission to transition mature technology to the software community, the SEI has transferred CMMI-related products and activities to the CMMI Institute, a 100%-controlled subsidiary of Carnegie Innovations, Carnegie Mellon University’s technology commercialization enterprise.
