Q-Base

Q-Base is the highly effective small to medium sized business alternative to the ISO 9000 series. Developed by Telarc, New Zealand's leading quality systems certification body, and completed in 1994, it represents the only internationally recognized quality management system available that is designed specifically for small and medium sized businesses. Q-Base takes the requirements of the ISO 9000 standards (it is derived directly from ISO 9002 - the most popular of the ISO 9000 series) and presents them free of jargon and in a manner suitable for use by small enterprises that do not employ quality management professionals. The objective was to develop a program that will identify the basic quality management disciplines that a small company must apply to give its customers confidence in the quality of the goods and services it supplies to them and achieve the cost savings that come from implementation of effective quality systems.

Q-Base is increasingly becoming recognized internationally as the standard quality management system for small and medium sized businesses because of its effective combination of value as a system and very low cost of implementation. An operating, certified Q-Base program can be enhanced to full ISO 9002 status using only the company's internal resources should it ever be required to do so.

Every organization can afford not only the cost but the time and resources required to implement the Q-Base system. he 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.

ISO 14000 Training Series

ISO 9001:2000 Making the Transition

Quality Systems Resources

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