Quality Assurance Systems were first widely introduced during WWII. There was a need to tighten controls on industry output, particularly in the munition industry. These were initially just inspection and testing, and relied on catching the defects at the end of the process.

Quality Systems

As the demand for better quality and more reliable products and services increased, the quality systems evolved to become the ISO 9000 series. These now rely on PREVENTION RATHER THAN CURE, and are applicable to all industries, including the Service industries.

In 1987 respected industry representatives from around the globe assisted the International Standards Organisation (ISO) to develop the ISO 9000 series of quality system standards.. These standards have been recognised and are in use in over 90 countries including the United Kingdom, the European Community, the USA, Asia and Australasia and are now the most popular standards series in use.

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In 1994, organisations could be certified to one of three QA standards: ISO 9001, ISO 9002, or ISO 9003.

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The 2 most commonly used standards in the ISO 9000 series were ISO 9001 and ISO 9002:

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	ISO 9001 sets out the requirements to be met by the Quality System when a business is involved in design, development, production, installation and/or servicing.
	ISO 9002 sets out the requirements of the QA system when a business is involved in development, production, installation and/or servicing.

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As you can see, the only difference between the 2 standards was the "Design" element. As typical cleaning businesses are not normally involved in detailed design, ISO 9002 should be the appropriate standard to be used.

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In December 2000, the International Standards Organisation released an upgraded version of the Quality Assurance Standard: ISO 9001:2000. This standard effectively replaced the previous 3 standards and made the choice of standard simpler for organisations wanting quality assurance certification. Now organisations that don't design (for example) can simply ignore the design requirements in the standard.

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In Australia, organisations are still able to be certified to the 1994 version of the standards until December 2003. But if they want to retain their certification after that date, they will need to upgrade to the new standard by December 2003.

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