ISO 9001:2000

The ISO 9000 family of standards relate to quality management systems and are designed to help organizations ensure they meet the needs of customers and other stakeholders. The standards are published by ISO, the International Organization for Standardization and available through National standards bodies.

ISO 9000 deals with the fundamentals of quality management systems, including the eight management principles; on which the family of standards is based. ISO 9001 deals with the requirements that organizations wishing to meet the standard have to meet.

Independent confirmation that organizations meet the requirements of ISO 9001 may be obtained from third party certification bodies. Over a million organizations worldwide [5] are independently certified making ISO 9001 one of the most widely used management tools in the world today.