ISO Management Systems

From products to practices
How ISO 9000 blazed the trail for service standards

In this personal view of the economic revolution wrought by service standards and standards for service, Australian standards marketeer Howard Paul weaves humour with serious insight to tell the story of how ISO 9000 opened the way that has led from standards for things, to standards for things that happen.

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Influencing purchasers
Import purchasers favour ISO 14001-certified suppliers

A survey of American, British, Dutch, German, Japanese and Spanish importers of Israeli products indicates that the decision to purchase can be positively influenced by the existence of a supplier’s ISO 14001-certified environmental management system.

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Auditing

Management – take control of your audit process! What is the fundamental purpose of auditing? According to the author of this article, it is “to provide managers with information to assist them to make business decisions”. He argues that internal auditing will only generate significant benefits to the organization if senior management are firmly in the driving seat of the audit process.

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Working with ISO 9001:2000 and without certification

Examples of ISO 9001:2000 implementation without certification have rarely been publicized. This report concerning a local government authority is therefore an exception. It describes the specific challenges that public authorities face in improving performance and innovative solutions such as inter-authority auditing.

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Training: ISO 10015 assures the quality and return on investment of training

To stay in the race, organizations must continuously re-invest in and upgrade the competence of their human resources. However, most managers do not know how to measure the benefits of training and the return on training investment. ISO 10015:1999, Quality management - Guidelines for training, provides answers to the crucial question: does it pay to train?

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Business benefits
What will an EMS do for my organization?

This article gives examples of the benefits of implementing ISO 14001 and other environmental measures, including significant contributions to the bottom line – millions of US dollar savings in some quoted examples.

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