An expert system for ISO 9001 certification pre-audit

A high quality level in the processes and products implies prestige and competitive advantages for organizations in any domain. Thus, several quality models have been proposed for quality evaluation. One of these most important models is the standard ISO 9001. Usually, the ISO 9001 certification implies several preaudits before the final certification audit. These audits are costly and it is therefore very important to pay only for the necessary ones. This paper proposes an expert system specifically oriented to software factories that helps to minimize the number of pre-audits. The expert system evaluates the software factory in the standard ISO 9001 and a pre-audit with a real audit team is only requested if the response of the system is positive. The design of this system is based on the CommonKADS methodology, and its implementation was carried out with the Clips tool.