ISO was formed in 1947 after World War 2. Its mission was to make trade between nations easier and smoother. The very first Committee was, believe it or not, on Nuts and Bolts! This was the result of the nightmare which occurred when US troops arrived in Europe and found their equipment was incompatible because screw threads were different. ISO operates very much like the United Nations by getting nations talking to each other and adopting common practices. These common practices are called ‘standards.’ When people hear the word 'standards' they often think this means a prescriptive set of rules that must be followed. A small proportion of standards are like that, but the majority are not. 

ISO Standards involve agreeing what are best practices in business. The ISO work of the last 20 years has focused on 'Management System Standards' (MSS's) which point to what should be done in an organization but are not prescriptive in how the practice should be carried out. The business will decide the method which best suits itself. The best known MSS is ISO 9001 which is part of the ISO 9000 series and which is used by well over a million companies globally. Other well-known MSS's are ISO 14000 Environmental Management, ISO 27000 Information Security and ISO 45000 Health and Safety. More recently the Innovation Management Series ISO 56000 has been initiated.

What is significant about all these MSS's is they have a common High-Level Structure which enables, for example, the Innovation standard to be integrated with the Quality standard. ISO standards give you the collective knowledge and experience of hundreds of experts globally. The ISO consensus process gives you practices you can rely on when you use the guidance standards. The requirements standards enable you to be audited in order to verify that you follow these best practices. The standards are very carefully written to avoid variation in their application and as a result, the language may need interpretation. This is where Quest can help you.