16 Quality Management and Environmental Management Systems (ISO 9000 and ISO 14000)

The ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 families are among ISO's most widely known and successful standards ever. ISO 9000 Quality Management System (QMS) has become an international reference for quality requirements in business to business dealings, and ISO 14000 Environmental Management System (EMS) looks set to achieve at least as much, if not more, in helping organizations to meet their environmental challenges.

The ISO 9000:2000 QMS is replacing the 1994 standards as follows;

ISO 9000:2000, entitled Fundamentals and Vocabulary, describes the fundamentals of a QMS and specifies the terminology for a QMS. It was developed on the basis of previous standards: ISO 8402:1994, Vocabulary, and ISO 9000-1:1994, Selection and Use.

ISO 9001:2000 Quality management systems — Requirements specifies requirements for a QMS where an organization needs to demonstrate its ability to provide products that meet customer requirements and applicable regulatory requirements and aims to enhance customer satisfaction. The three quality assurance requirement standards ISO 9001:1994, ISO 9002:1994, and ISO 9003:1994 are replaced by a single quality management system requirement standard, ISO 9001:2000 Quality management systems — Requirements.