Leveraging cultural change with ISO

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) released a series of quality standards which were destined to become the boiler plate for quality management systems around the world. The standards were written by quality professionals under the direction of ISO´s quality assurance technical committee and emphasized the basic quality system requirements needed to design and provide quality products and services, and to prevent nonconformity. The author discusses the impact of these standards on industry worldwide and in particular the registration process to a standard. The author then discusses Power Systems ISO preparation at AT&T. The topics that required significant effort on the part of Power Systems to implement, are also discussed and include: marketing and sales contractual advice; education and training; design control; and documentation and data control