The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) will publish a revision of ISO 9000 Standard by November 2000. The revision has been brought about not only by ISO's five-year review plan, but market demand. According to a survey conducted by ISO, over 80% of the respondents stated that there was a need to revise the existing version (1994). The objective of this revision is to modify the existing orientation from manufacturing to process-based, so that the standard will be more applicable to different types of organizations and can cater better to the implementation of total quality management (TQM). The following article briefly reports the progress of revision up to the release of Committee Draft 2 (CD2) in March 1999.
 

The ISO 9000: Year 2000 version explicitly requires top management to live up to their commitment to quality management and improvement of their product/service quality. In fact, top management’s perception and understanding of quality greatly impact the setting of objectives, resource allocation, operation and improvement efforts of the entire organization. The following article provides quality practitioners with useful tactics for selling quality to top management.