The ISO folks are surely selling the world on ISO 9001 and they’re pushing the ISO 14001 standard as is evident by the matrices included in the specification as Annex A.So far, acceptance of ISO 14001 has been extremely limited.
I am going to addressing ISO 14001 to some degree as we go along. If you haven’t yet been affected by a requirement for ISO 14001, you should at least be aware of it. Ford, GM and Chrysler now require it of their suppliers. ISO 14001 has not really ‘taken off’ in the US in large part because current federal, state and local laws pretty much keep polluters in check and require some type of planning for hazardous materials including by-products of manufacturing processes.
In regard to ISO 14001, the issue is not far removed from implementing ISO 9001. The only difference is 14001 is technically called an Environmental Management System. From the cross reference in ISO 9001 Annex A (outlines the correspondence between the two documents), it is obvious 14001 is closely related to ISO 9001 in a number of places. It is expected that within a year or two 14001 will be ‘aligned’ with ISO 9001. Co-implementation is a minor issue.
ISO 14001:1996 EMS ‘Process Model’
The below is from page vi of ISO 14001:1996.
Notice it is not drawn as a closed loop system as is the ISO 9001 system.
