ISO 9001 model for Quality Assurance in design/development, production, installation and servicing
ISO 9002 model for Quality Assurance in production, installation and servicing
ISO 9003 model for Quality Assurance in final inspection and test

It should be noted that a company's quality system can only be certified to ISO 9001, ISO 9002, or ISO 9003 and that a particular quality system would only be assessed for compliance with one of these standards The other documents listed above are guidelines on the standards/systems for Production, Installation and Servicing. However where there is an element of design in the products or services provided the ISO 9001 standard is adopted. It is extremely rare for companies to obtain ISO 9003 for final inspection and test. There is often a grey area as to whether ISO 9001 or ISO 9002 applies and this is particularly the case with service industries.

The ISO 9000 standards by a technical committee ISO/TC 176 Quality Management and Quality Assurance. The standards were last revised in July 1994 and work on the next version in addition is currently underway. The ISO 9000 standards are not written for any particular industry sector but are intended to apply to all business sectors, regardless of the type of product or service evolved around production based industries and in particular mechanical and electrical production/systems for the Nuclear/Military industry sectors. Thus the standards is most effective when used as a management tool for such types of industries. Problems of interpretation and differences of opinion on interpretation often arise when the standard is applied to purely service industry/business sectors.

For the meaningful certification the ISO 900 Quality standards should only be awarded by organisations that are accredited to a particular countries national accredited board. In the UK this organisation was called the National Association of Certification Bodies (NACCB). More recently it has joined with National Physical Laboratory and is called UKAS.

There are currently about fourteen countries that have their own national accreditation bodies and these include; UK, USA, DENMARK, HOLLAND, AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND, SWITZERLAND, ITALY, GERMANY, CANADA, BELGIUM, SWEDEN AND BRAZIL. These bodies are responsible for the monitoring and regulation of organisation that award the ISO 9000 standard in their respective countries or award the ISO 9000 certificates to companies.

The national associations would establish such criteria as:

• THE VALIDITY OF THE AWARD OF THE CERTIFICATE
• FREQUENCY & SCOPE OF PERIODIC INSPECTIONS
• QUALIFICATIONS & INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE OF AUDITORS
• ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS

The majority of organisations carrying out certification are third party inspection agencies that have been traditionally involved with inspection of ships, marine and industrial safety and other third party verification activities. There are also other companies that are accredited to various national organisation and these companies offer professional services for quality assurance.

In the Middle East there are no countries or states that have their own national association for regulating the certification bodies. Thus when the certification bodies award the ISO 9000 certificate in the Middle East, they are doing so in accordance with the regulations of another country typically from Europe. It should be noted that there can be differences in the regulators for the award of the ISO 9000 in different countries.

The ISO 9000 provides a checklist of management topics that can be applied to any industry sector. Because of this generality the standard frequently includes the phrases:

thus a number of clauses which contain subjective requirement are not defined in any detail for different industry sectors. The interpretation of these somewhat vague clauses in the standard is governed by the

• internal regulations of the classification societies
• by the view of individual auditors within a single classification society.

Although the auditor may have been trained in the same manner and be working to the same classification society guidelines, an element of subjectivity can creep in and different views can be taken on these clauses. This situation exists in Europe where good practise in business management is generally of a commonly accepted standard due to similar educational standards and cultural values. The element of subjectivity is even more apparent in the Middle East where there is greater variability in values, culture and education.

Companies typically have different reasons for wanting to obtain the ISO 9000 standards and these are;

• PRE-QUALIFICATION FOR A PARTICULAR PROJECT/CLIENT
• MARKETING OR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT NEEDS
• GENUINE DESIRE FOR BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT AND GREATER MANAGEMENT CONTROL

Unless there is the commitment of the management for the latter reason the system will not improve the efficiency of the company/provide a better control of operations.

It is understood that the following organisations carry out certification audits and award then ISO 9000 certification from UAE;