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).

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.

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.

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.

The volume of oil and oil products moving through America’s pipelines, waterways, roads, and rails borders on the unimaginable.

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.

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.

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.

To remain the valuable business system that it currently is, ISO 9001 needs to continue to evolve, ensuring that organizations of all sizes, complexities, and locations see a clear connection between their strategic objectives and their quality management system (QMS

(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is hosting a free public workshop on best practices in federal conformity-assessment activities Wed., April 11, 2012, at NIST’s Gaithersburg, Maryland, site.