Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS)

The Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS) were originally developed in 1949, by the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee (JISC) and have been evolving ever since. The JISC in many ways has been Japan's answer to ISO. There has been some harmonization of the JIS with the more internationally recognized ISO 9000 series with the JISC incorporating the ISO 9000 series into the JIS in 1991.

The JIS are extremely sophisticated and complex and go beyond the requirements of the ISO 9000 series but essentially perform the same quality management function. The JIS are more rigorous and comprehensive in scope making them extremely challenging for an organization to successfully implement. This fact has led to their adoption almost exclusively in Japan and makes their requirement outside of Japan very rare.

Organizations that have a JIS certification can be considered to be at least as good if not better than an organization that has an ISO 9000 certification with most JIS systems being closer in scope to ISO 9001.

ISO 14000 Training Series

ISO 9001:2000 Making the Transition

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