The term "iso" is a Greek word meaning "equal", and is a word adopted by the International Organization for Standardization (loosely referred to as ISO) to mean a standard. There are thousands of ISO standards, mostly dealing with standardizing requirements for product, so that commerce between different parties, especially on an international plane, is facilitated.

ISO 9000 is a family of standards designed to assist an organization to design its management system so as to maximize its ability to meet customer expectations and derive customer satisfaction. It will also help in maximizing productivity and profitability. The current (2000) version of the standard consists mainly of ISO 9000- a collection of fundamentals and definitions; ISO 9001- a collection of rules which will be used to design the management system, and covers all aspects of an organization's operation; and ISO 9004 which provides guidelines to continuously improve an organization's quality management system.

ISO 9001 is therefore, the standard of interest. It is the culmination of decades of development effort that arose out of needs of businesses. It first started in the USA during World War II, when the military needed a standard to help ensure the quality and reliability of the products it was procuring. This military standard has since gone through several revisions done with the expenditures of thousands of man-years of effort on an international basis to produce the latest and best. It is suitable and available for organizations of all types to use and benefit.