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.

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.

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.

I wrote what follows with ISO 9001 and its derivatives in mind because these are the standards I’m most familiar with.

Deciding how to control your documents can be difficult.

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 d

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

These days quality professionals have shifted away from actually writing procedures to helping others develop documentation to describe the businesses they are in.

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.