The Eight Quality Management Principles

Principle 1 - Customer-Focus
Your organization depends on customers and therefore your organization should understand current and future customer needs, meet customer requirements and strive to exceed customer expectations (see clause 5.2; 7.2; and 8.2.1).

Principle 2 - Leadership
Leaders establish unity of purpose and direction of the organization. They should create and maintain the internal environment in which people can become fully involved in achieving the organization's objectives (see clause 5)

Principle 3 - Involvement of People
People at all levels are the essence of an organization and their full involvement enables their abilities to be used for the organization’s benefit (see clause 6.2).

Principle 4 - Process Approach
A desired result is achieved more efficiently when related resources and activities are managed as a process (see clause 4.1).

Principle 5 - System Approach to Management
Identifying, understanding and managing interrelated processes as a system contributes to the organization’s effectiveness and efficiency in achieving its objective (see clause 4.1)..

Principle 6 - Continual Improvement
Continual improvement of the organizations overall performance should be a permanent objective of the organization (see clause 8.5.1 and 4.1).

Principle 7 - Factual approach to decision making
Effective decisions are based on the analysis of data and information (see clause 4.1e and 8.4).

Principle 8 - Mutually beneficial supplier relationships
An organization and its suppliers are interdependent, and a mutually beneficial relationship enhances the ability of both to create value (see clause 7.4).

These eight management principles form the basis for all QMS standards within the ISO 9000 family. Each of these principles is included as requirements in one or more clauses of the ISO 9001:2000 standard.