The Quality System – BS 5750/ISO 9000

The last 20 years has seen something of a revolution in the field of quality management in the UK. The fact that ‘quality’ was being used as a source of competitive advantage by other countries, most notably Japan, together with the emergence of an increasingly demanding customer base, has promoted the realisation that quality is the basis of manufacturing or service excellence. In the context of the evolution of ‘quality thinking’ four major ‘quality eras’ (Table 1) have been identified. This article will be concerned with the third stage ‘quality assurance’, the primary concern being one of a coordinated approach to quality