ISO 9001: 2008 is an international standard related to quality management system, applicable to any organization from all types of business sectors and activities.
ISO 9001:2008 is based on eight quality management principles (all fundamental to good business practice). When fully adopted, these principles can help improve your organizational performance:
Customer focus: organizations depends on their customers, and therefore need to shape activities around the fulfillment of market need
Leadership: is needed to provide unity of purpose and direction
Involvement of people: creates an environment where people become fully involved in achieving the organization's objectives
Process approach: to achieve organizational objectives, resources and activities need to be managed as processes, with an understanding of how the outputs of one process affects the inputs of another
System approach to management: the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization depends on a systemized approach to work activities
Continual improvement: adopting this as a part of everyday culture is a key objective for an organization
Fact based decision-making: effective decisions are based on the logical and intuitive analysis of data and factual information
Mutually beneficial supplier relationships: such relationships will enhance theability to create value.