International Standard Organization ISO 9001:2000 Clause 8

Clause 8: Measurement, Analysis and Improvements

Clause 8.1: General
Metrics for product quality and process quality has to be defined by the management as they play a very important role in process improvement. The process effectiveness and improvement can be checked by the use of these metrics.

Clause 8.2: Monitoring and Measurement

Clause 8.2.1: Customer Satisfaction
The management has to define the metrics to measure the customer satisfaction as it is the most important objective for any organization.
Clause 8.2.2: Internal Audit
For the proper implementation of the quality management system across the organization, an internal audit has to be formed. Necessary training has to be provided to the internal audit team on the auditing process.
Clause 8.2.3: Monitoring and measurement of processes
Using metrics, each process that is defined in the quality management system has to be monitored and its effectiveness is measured.
Clause 8.2.4: Monitoring and measurement of product
The information obtained from the metrics for each product can be analyzed to study the effectiveness of the product's processes.

Clause 8.3: Control of non-conforming product

Appropriate action needs to be taken to ensure that the product that is found to be non-conforming is not delivered to the customer.

Clause 8.4: Analysis of data

To ensure the effectiveness of the quality management system, the management has to collect the data that can be obtained from customers, suppliers, process metrics, product metrics etc for the study.

Clause 8.5: Improvement

Clause 8.5.1: Continual Improvement
For continually improving the organization's performance, the quality management system should be continuously improved based on the inputs such as customer feedback, external and internal audit reports, supplier's feedback etc.
Clause 8.5.2: Corrective action
The corrective action is to be taken to remove the defects when a product has non-conformities.
Clause 8.5.3: Preventive action
Potential non-conformities are identified and preventive action is taken. Records of corrective action provides good inputs to take preventive actions.