Quality (business) and those of competitors (the quality gap). In the past two decades this quality gap has been gradually decreasing between competitive products and services. This is partly due to the contracting (also called outsourcing) of manufacturing to countries like China and India, as well internationalization of trade and competition. These countries, among many others, have raised their own standards of quality in order to meet international standards and customer demands. The ISO 9000 series of standards are probably the best known international standards for quality management, though specialized standards such as ISO 15189 (for medical laboratories) and ISO 14001 (for
Environmental resource management management tools, standards and systems are required. An environmental management standard or system or protocol attempts to reduce environmental impact as measured by some objective criteria. The ISO 14001 standard is the most widely used standard for environmental risk management and is closely aligned to the European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). As a common auditing standard, the ISO 19011 standard explains how to combine this with quality management. Other environmental management systems (EMS) tend to be based on the ISO 14001 standard and many extend it in various ways: Other strategies exist that rely on making simple distinctions rather