ISO 9000 quality certification is: more than a 'good-looking diploma'

摘要

The huge industry boom that took place in the beginning of the 20th Century drove progressive development of the product and information trades, both nationally and throughout the world. The boom obliged so-called "industrialized countries" to develop parallel growth in such areas as unification, standardization and normation as a way to: Promote language uniformity in definitions and in technical and commercial terms, to keep technical and commercial relationships as clear as possible; and Establish national criteria that guarantee comparability, both dimensional and functional, between products and different countries. In relation to the field in which these rules are elaborated and then applied, we can distinguish four main levels of normation:international, national, regional and corporate. International normation is carried out by the International Standard Organization, founded in 1947 by the United States and the United Kingdom. More than 90 countries are now members of the ISO, and theyfunction in their respective normation bodies. For example, UNI is the Italian entity for unification.