coffeeISO (International Organization for Standardization) is the world’s largest developer and publisher of International Standards.
ISO is a network of the national standards institutes of 163 countries, one member per country, with a Central Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, that coordinates the system.
ISO is a non-governmental organization that forms a bridge between the public and private sectors. On the one hand, many of its member institutes are part of the governmental structure of their countries, or are mandated by their government. On the other hand, other members have their roots uniquely in the private sector, having been set up by national partnerships of industry associations.
Therefore, ISO enables a consensus to be reached on solutions that meet both the requirements of business and the broader needs of society.
ISO has developed over 18 000 International Standards on a variety of subjects and some 1100 new ISO standards are published every year. The full range of technical fields can be seen from the listing International Standards. Users can browse that listing to find bibliographic information on each standard and, in many cases, a brief abstract. The online ISO Standards listing integrates both the ISO Catalogue of published standards and the ISO Technical programme of standards under development.
Automotive
New edition of ISO/TS 16949 quality specification for automotive industry supply chain
ISO has just published a new edition of ISO/TS 16949:2009, Quality management systems – Particular requirements for the application of ISO 9001:2008 for automotive production and relevant service part organizations, which specifies quality system requirements for suppliers in the automotive sector. It replaces the 2002 edition which has been used by the major automotive manufacturers to approve more than 35 000 organizations worldwide that produce and supply parts for the sector.
Ensuring vehicle performance
Effective supply-chain management is critical in the automotive industry. There are thousands of components in a vehicle’s systems and subsystems. Upon final assembly, the vehicles produced are shipped into a competitive and high-volume global vehicle market.
‘ISOmobile!’ Eight of every 10 cars to run on ISO 9001:2000 by 2006
For the first time in history, the highly competitive automotive industry has reached consensus through the International Automotive Task Force (IATF) on a common set of supplier quality requirements that were developed and published in March 2002 by ISO as ISO/TS 16949:2002.