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Summary
A quality management system (QMS) is a collection of business
processes focused on achieving quality policy and quality objectives to meet
customerrequirements. It is expressed as the organizational structure, policies,
procedures, processes and resources needed to implement quality management.
Early systems emphasized predictable outcomes of an industrial product
production line, using simple statistics and random sampling. By the 20th century,
labour inputs were typically the most costly inputs in most industrialized societies,
so focus shifted to team cooperation and dynamics, especially the early signalling
of problems via a continuous improvement cycle. In the 21st century, QMS has
tended to converge with sustainability and transparency initiatives, as both investor
and customer satisfaction and perceived quality is increasingly tied to these factors.
Of all QMS regimes, the ISO 9000 family of standards is probably the most widely
implemented worldwide - the ISO 19011 auditregime applies to both, and deals
with quality and sustainability and their integration.