All Features
Denise Robitaille
Editor’s note: Denise Robitaille is a member of the U.S. TAG to ISO/TC 176, the committee responsible for updating the ISO 9000 family of standards. She will be reporting on the revision progress to ISO 9001, which will be completed in 2015. Read other articles in the series here.
By now most…
Quality Digest
On March 28, 2013, the world lost a person whom many consider to be a major contributor to the world of industrial statistics: George E. P. Box. Relatively unknown outside the world of statistics, Box was certainly very well known by those who have studied or practiced industrial statistics.
His…
Oscar Combs
ISO 9001 is much more than a standard. It should be part of a company’s strategic plan rather than something to get certified to because customers require it. The guidelines and quality principles in ISO 9001 are just good business practices.
Throughout my career in quality, I’ve often been amazed…
Randy Dougherty
This article is about accreditation of conformity assessment bodies. Before proceeding further, however, it is important to provide some definitions in order for all of us to have the same understanding of key terms.
The first term is “conformity assessment body” (CAB). According to ISO/IEC 17000…
Mike Micklewright
Got your attention by what seems a bizarre claim? Yes, you can significantly reduce the number of procedures you maintain by converting your ISO 9001 quality management system (QMS) to one that is also certified to the medical device standard ISO 13485 and the aerospace standard AS9100.
I am…
George Anastasopoulos
In July 2008, the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament agreed to provide a legal framework that creates one monopoly in each member state of the European Union (EU) for the provision of accreditation services across Europe.
This action could be understood (but even then that’s…
NIST
With new treatments for disease, test suites that safeguard computers, and even expertise to rescue miners trapped thousands of feet underground, federal laboratories have a wealth of technologies and know-how that can give U.S. companies a competitive edge and improve quality of life.
These…
There are several programs on the market that provide information to consumers about energy efficiency. However, the ENERGY STAR program, a joint effort of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is likely the best known program.
When consumers see…
NIST
During a recent ribbon-cutting ceremony, the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) unveiled a new laboratory designed to demonstrate that a typical suburban home for a family of four can generate as much energy as it uses in a year. Following an initial…
NIST
The United States already has one of the highest direct fire loss rates among developed nations, and progress in reducing this tremendous burden is slowing.
Fires claim more than 3,000 lives a year, injure more than 90,000 firefighters and civilians, and impose costs and losses totaling more than…
Umberto Tunesi
I recently bought myself an almost-latest-version smartphone. It was intended to celebrate my 62nd birthday; replace my present, obsolete portable phone; and be reliable and not too expensive.
Well, its “Quick Reference Guide” consists of 34 pages, three of which are blank, five give generic,…
ISO
T he International Organization for Standardization (ISO) develops and publishes more than 19,200 voluntary international standards that bring benefits for businesses, governments, and society. But how do the standards contribute to the economic returns of countries and companies? What is the…
Umberto Tunesi
I wrote what follows with ISO 9001 and its derivatives in mind because these are the standards I’m most familiar with. Yet even before writing, I realized, at least from my experience, that the following points can be shared by most management system consultancy projects. Especially when the…
Miriam Boudreaux
Deciding how to control your documents can be difficult. ISO 9001, the quality management system (QMS) standard from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), requires you maintain accurate and up-to-date procedures, but doesn’t give a lot of guidance on how to get there. Between…
NIST
A new versatile measurement system devised by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) accurately and quickly measures the electric power output of solar energy devices, capabilities useful to researchers and manufacturers working to develop and make next-generation…
ISO
Editor's note: The following interview with ANSI CEO, Joe Bhatia, first appeared in the June 2012 edition of ISO Focus+ magazine and is reproduced with the kind permission of ISO Central Secretariat.
On Sept. 17–22, 2012, the United States will play host to the world’s standardization community as…
Paul Naysmith
These days quality professionals have shifted away from actually writing procedures to helping others develop documentation to describe the businesses they are in. Although I live in hope, I still see many poor attempts at “procedures”—or at least failures in their facilitation.
I have a simple…
Stewart Anderson
The production and provision of any product or service requires many activities to be performed. The pattern of activities that a firm adopts to create and deliver value to customers is commonly called the value chain (or value stream). A key issue in competitive strategy is how to organize a value…
William A. Levinson
People often ask for examples of benefits from implementing ISO 9001-compliant quality management systems (QMS). Such examples are often difficult to provide, at least in terms of immediate results. The reason is that the effects of ISO 9001 and its automotive counterpart ISO/TS 16949 are largely…
Umberto Tunesi
Back in the early 1990s, there was a saying, loudly heralded by one global registrar: “Certify your company, and the export markets will open their doors to it.” Well, the actual wording was a bit more rude, to get the message across to small companies.
I guess this slogan still holds true,…
Stanley H. Salot Jr.
Editor’s notes: The HSF Mark was inadvertently truncated on the issue of Quality Digest Daily released on Tuesday, June 12th, 2012. The full and complete logo can be found below. Author Stan Salot will be the guest this week on Quality Digest Live, airing Friday, June 15, at 11 a.m. Pacific.
We…
NIST
The volume of oil and oil products moving through America’s pipelines, waterways, roads, and rails borders on the unimaginable.
“Look at it this way,” says John Wright, a project leader in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Physical Measurement Laboratory’s (PML) Fluid…
NIST
Two new advanced laboratory buildings for high-precision science and measurements have officially opened in Boulder, Colorado, providing upgraded facilities to support technology innovation and economic growth as well as the training of future scientists.
Federal, state, and local government…
ASQ
March 15, 2012, marked the 25th anniversary of the ISO 9000 series standards. Since the standards were released in 1987, they have gone through three revisions: 1994, 2000, and 2008. According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), as of 2009, the total number of organizations…
Jim Tennermann
Everyone in the quality profession has heard the term “NIST traceable.” Having calibration traceability to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is desirable for most measurement devices. It is also enshrined as a requirement in some regulatory documents. Unfortunately, NIST…
