Version Of ISO Research Articles

ISO 9000 – 2000 version: implications for applicants and examiners

The 2000 version of ISO 9000 is very exciting for quality practitioners because it embraces the principles of quality management that have received wide acceptance because of the publicity of the various National Quality Awards that are models based on these tenets. However, there are potential difficulties that lie ahead for those organizations that aspire to fulfill the requirements of this new version of ISO 9000 unless they recognize that there is a cultural gap between the new approach required as compared to the previous 1994 version. Similarly, auditors working with the new version must have a different background and approach as the emphasis is being changed from one that has been totally compliance‐based to a new approach that also includes evaluation of management techniques that requires hands‐on experience and judgment. Unless these two types of issues are properly addressed, the 2000 version of ISO 9000 will frustrate applicants and may tarnish the quality movement.

The implications of the changes to ISO 9000 for organisational excellence

The international quality systems standard ISO 9000 is changing. Whilst much maligned, the standard has still done much to ensure basic quality requirements in world industry, commerce and the public sector. In November ISO 9001 is changing – dramatically – and ISO 9002 will no longer exist. This is probably the most substantial change in its history. In one major leap the international standard will come up to date with modern development in quality thinking. Quality assurance will never be quite the same again!The new version of ISO 9001 places emphasis on process management and resource management and has commonality of architecture with ISO 9004, so that quality assurance requirements and quality management aspirations can be aligned holistically. The standard will be reduced from a 20‐clause standard to a four‐clause standard. Further, it will be more holistic, more customer orientated and have more in common with other quality and excellence models. It is a good development, but it will mean changes, and the sooner organisations start to understand the new requirements, the readier they will be for avoiding the pitfalls!What, though, are the implications for organisational excellence? This paper discusses how the changes may assist the development of a holistic approach to excellence, but also the remaining areas of difficulty.

System building and implementations of TQM in Greater China: an overview

This paper examines the recent quality movement in Greater China and the development of total quality management (TQM) since the 1980s in the following three aspects. First, China is determined to upgrade quality management at the enterprise level by a top‐down approach. The efforts of the PRC Government in establishing quality systems to comply with international standard is reviewed. The Provisional Total Quality Management Guide for Industrial Enterprises and the GB/T 19000 standard (the Chinese version of ISO 9000) for national standards and quality certification are examined. Second, at the implementation level, the development of TQM and other quality systems is found to be less than satisfactory. A brief review of major empirical studies regarding TQM practices in China’s state‐owned enterprises and collective‐owned township enterprises is carried out. Third, TQM practices in Hong Kong, a Chinese market‐oriented economy, are reviewed and compared with those in China to explore any possible implications emerging from the political integration of these two regions in 1997.

The SQUID approach to defining a quality model

This paper describes an attempt to use the approach developed by the SQUIDproject, which was part of the ESPRIT 3 programme, to define the software quality requirements of the Telescience project. The SQUID project developed its approach to quality modelling in parallel with ongoing feedback from testing that approach on the Telescience project, which was both large and software intensive. As part of this exercise we used the ISO software quality standard ISO 9126. It was an assessment of this and other existing quality models that caused us to re-assess what was meant by a quality model and led to a decomposition of existing ‘quality models‘ into a composite model reflecting the different aspects of the model and its mapping onto a specific project or product. We break existing quality models into components which reflect the structure and content of the model. This composite model must then be customized for an individual product/project, we call this customized model a ‘Product Quality Model‘. Application of this approach to the Telescience project identified a number of practical problems that the SQUID project needed to address. It also indicated a number of problems inherent in the current version of ISO 9126.

Some consequences of including low frequencies in the evaluation of floor impact sound

A method for including frequencies down to 50 Hz in the evaluation of floor impact sound has become available with the new version of ISO 717-2. In addition to the single number quantity for rating the impact sound insulation, a new spectrum adaptation term has been defined. The method has been studied by the Acoustics Group of NKB (Nordic Committee on Building Regulations). The new method has been applied to a large number of recent measuring results from the Nordic countries. It was found that the spectrum adaptation term for the extended frequency range depends on the type of floor construction, and light floor constructions are evaluated less favorably than heavy constructions. Comparison with data from a 14-year-old Swedish survey suggests that the extended frequency range leads to a higher correlation with subjective evaluation of impact noise. The consequences of applying the extended frequency range in future building regulations or in a system for sound classification of dwellings have been considered. However, there are several problems to be solved, among which are a lack of available data for floor constructions at low frequencies, an increased measurement uncertainty, and the fact that some floor constructions are evaluated too favorably by the new method.