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For those readers who do not know, ISO is the acronym for the International Organization for Standardization.  ISO 9000 standards started in manufacturing but now cover a wide range of other industries.  I don’t want to get too deep into the technical aspects of ISO certifications and practices, because that is not the point of this post, but I do want to explain why I am considering getting certified.

Being ISO 9000 certified can be a mandatory prerequisite for dealing with government organizations and getting government contracts.  Lack of ISO certification can immediately black list your company.  While ISO 9000, to the best of my understanding, mainly has to do with the quality control side of things, ISO 14001 / 14000 concerns environmental regulation and protection.

The goal is to implement standards that will help maintain our environment without compromising trade or business efficiency.  As with ISO 9000, standards play a big part in this.  There needs to be a protocol to measure and understand whether trading / business partners are harming the environment.  Similar to with ISO 9000 quality control, certification is not provided directly by ISO, but instead is awarded by third party organizations.

Feel free to comment if I am misunderstanding anything, as I am new to ISO standards and would not take offense, but it seems that the main motivation for obtaining ISO certification is business from governmental and foreign organizations.  In the case of the government, this seems to be simply because rules seem to be an absolute necessity.  With foreign organization, it is more likely because of the broad cultural, economic, and ethical differences that exist (ISO 14001), and also because of the fundamental difficulty of ensuring foreign products are of adequate quality.

Feel free to comment and let me know if you have any thoughts / input.