As you've no doubt learned, there is a wealth of information available on the Internet (and elsewhere) about ISO 9001 quality, ISO 14001 environment, OHSAS 18001 safety standards. Knowing that you have little time to wade through volumes of data, we aim to give you very brief, practical snapshots about ISO / OHSAS systems: what they're about, how they work, registration/"certification", etc., both here and via links lower on this page

By furnishing such condensed information we obviously leave many issues unexplored. If you can't find answers to your questions below, contact us.

Where they're from

The ISO and OHSAS standards (ISO 9001 quality, ISO 14001 environmental, OHSAS 18001 health/safety) have been developed and published by national / international standards writing bodies. The Standards themselves are not new. They are the latest in a process that has been evolving on the business (and, to some extent, governmental) arena since the early 20th century. Nor are they static. The Standards continue to evolve and change.

What they're for

Quality, environmental, and health/safety standards were developed essentially to codify basic, universal, and generic quality, environmental, and health/safety management principles. ISO 9000 / ISO 9001, ISO 14000 / ISO 14001, and OHSAS 18000 / OHSAS 18001 are purely generic, applying to any organization providing any product/service anywhere in the world. Beyond these there are market-sector specific versions of certain Standards (i.e. ISO 13485 for medical device makers; ISO/TS 16949 (sometimes called ISO 16949 or TS16949) for automotive firms). All these serve as blueprints for organizations to map their quality / environmental / health-safety practices against.

How they're used

Most of the time, the Standards are used as part of sets of requirements imposed by customers on their suppliers. In other words, some organizations, believing (rightly) that the quality of their processes is highly dependent on the quality of the products/services furnished by suppliers, won't do business with suppliers that are not ISO 9000 / ISO 9001 registered. An ISO 9000 / ISO 9001 registered firm can be presumed to have in place at least the basic systems for assuring customer satisfaction.

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