ISO 9000 is among ISO's most widely known and successful standards ever. ISO 9000 has become an international reference for quality requirements in business to business dealings.

The vast majority of ISO standards are highly specific to a particular product, material, or process. However, the standard that has earned ISO a worldwide reputation is known as "generic management system standards". "Generic" means that the same standards can be applied to any organization, large or small, whatever its product - including whether its "product" is actually a service - in any sector of activity, and whether it is a business enterprise, a public administration, or a government department. "Management system" refers to what the organization does to manage its processes, or activities. "Generic" also signifies that no matter what the organization is or does, if it wants to establish a business management system, then such a system has a number of essential features which are spelled out in the relevant standards of the ISO 9000.

ISO 9000 is concerned with "business management". This means what the organization does to enhance customer satisfaction by meeting customer and applicable regulatory requirements and continually to improve its performance in this regard.

ISO 9000 consist of standards and guidelines relating to management systems, and related supporting standards on terminology and specific tools, such as auditing (the process of checking that the management system conforms to the standard). ISO 9000 is primarily concerned with "quality management". Like "beauty", everyone may have his or her idea of what "quality" is. In plain language, the standardized definition of "quality" in ISO 9000 refers to all those features of a product (or service) which are required by the customer. "Quality management" means what the organization does to ensure that its products conform to the customer's requirements.

ISO 9000 is concerned with the way an organization goes about its work, and not directly the result of this work. In other words, they concern processes, and not products - at least, not directly. Nevertheless, the way in which the organization manages its processes is obviously going to affect its final product. In the case of ISO 9000, it is going to affect whether or not everything has been done to ensure that the product meets the customer's requirements.

However, ISO 9000 is not a product standard. The management system standards in ISO 9000 state requirements for what the organization must do to manage processes influencing quality (ISO 9000).

ISO 9001:2000 is used if you are seeking to establish a management system that provides confidence in the conformance of your product to established or specified requirements. It is now the only standard in the ISO 9000 family against whose requirements your quality system can be certified by an external agency. The standard recognizes that the word "product" applies to services, processed material, hardware and software intended for, or required by, your customer.

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