Beginning in 1994 with the successful launch of QS 9000 by Daimler Chrysler, Ford and GM, the Automotive OEM’s recognized the increased value that could be derived from an independent quality system registration scheme and the efficiencies that could be realized in the supply chain by commonizing system requirements.
In 1996, the success of these efforts led to a move towards the development of a globally accepted and harmonized quality management system requirements document. From this, the International Automotive Task Force (IATF) was formed to lead the development effort. It is an ad hoc group of OEM’s and automotive trade associations whose common goal is to improve the quality of products to automotive customers worldwide, along with a recognition scheme and training to support third party assessments of automotive suppliers. IATF members include the Big 3 and other OEM’s and industry groups.
The result of the IATF’s efforts, in conjunction with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has been the introduction of ISO/TS 16949:2002 quality management systems requirements documents. ISO/TS 16949 forms the requirements or the application of ISO 9001 for automotive production and relevant service part organizations. ISO/TS 16949 used the ISO 9001 Standard as the basis for their development and included the requirements from these Standards with specific ’adders’ for the automotive supply chain. The 2002 revision of TS builds off the ISO 9001:2000 document