ISO 9004

What is ISO 9004?

ISO 9004 is also not a standard, but a guideline for performance improvement. Keep in mind that ISO 9000 and ISO 9001 are fundamental Quality Management System documents.

ISO 9004 attempts to take companies beyond the fundamentals. There are explanations and descriptions of continual improvement activities for enhancing customer satisfaction. The word ‘efficiency’ deals with the internal measure of cost, where effectiveness is an external measure of quality (customer satisfaction).

The ISO 9004 guideline takes each section of ISO 9001 and offers information and ideas to help a company move forward in their improvement efforts. There is a self-assessment annex and an annex describing the two fundamental ways to conduct continual improvement. ISO 9004 is an exceptionally valuable resource and I recommend that companies and their management acquaint themselves with it.