What are the ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 standards? Why are they important?

What are the ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 standards? Why are they important?

ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization, which is an international federation which handles 140 countries’ national standard bodies. The main aim of ISO is to set the international measures for the quality of products. ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 are standards set by International Organization for Standardization. ISO 9000 is a standard which talks about the quality management and assurance standards. The latest version of this standards is ISO 9000:2004 which requires an organization to carefully determine the need of customers which are according to regulatory and legal requirement. Few other standards are also part of ISO 9000 i.e. product testing, process control storage and delivery. It states that to improve customer relations and to get higher sales, a company should make investment in making improvement in the quality of product. The important of ISO 9000 is very much as many companies of European Union requires ISO 9000 certification from other company to do business with it.

Similarly, ISO 14000 is also a standards which talks about the impact of operations of company on the environment. This standards is used for developing effective environmental management system. Its requirement includes establishing specific improvement targets, developing effective environmental policy, maintaining top management review of processes, and conducting audits of environmental programs.  ISO 14000 is important as its counts towards that social responsibility of the organizations.