WHY AND BY WHOM WERE THE ISO 9000 STANDARDS DEVELOPED?
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide federation founded in 1946 to promote the development of international standards and related activities (including conformity assessment) to facilitate the exchange of goods and services worldwide. ISO is composed of member bodies from over 90 countries, the U.S. member body being the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). In 1979, ISO formed Technical Committee (TC) 176 on Quality Management and Quality Assurance to address the worldwide trend towards increasingly stringent customer demands with regard to quality combined with growing confusion in international trade resulting from differing national and subnational quality system requirements. In 1987, based on the work of TC 176, ISO published the ISO 9000 Standard Series on quality management and assurance. These standards were based on considerable input from a number of countries, especially the United States (U.S.), Canada, and the United Kingdom (U.K
