ISO 9001:2015 A Pocket Guide

CHAPTER 2: A BRIEF HISTORY OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND ISO 9001

The pursuit of quality and consistency goes back a long time – probably as long as trade has existed. A craftsman or merchant in the traditional mould wants their product to be the best fit to requirements that it can be so they can minimise costly reworking and ensure ongoing demand/funding. In pre-industrial societies, production was typically conducted by an individual responsible for all parts of the final product or service, so training and practising was by far the most common way to ensure quality.

When industrialisation arrived in the eighteenth century, the distribution of labour between both people and machines meant that traditional quality practices were no longer really ...