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
ISO 55000 for recommending competent assessors and training providers. ISO 55000 ISO 55000 is an international standard covering management of assets of any kind. Before it, a Publicly Available Specification (PAS 55) was published by the British Standards Institution in 2004 for physical assets. The ISO 55000 series of Asset Management standards was launched in January 2014. PAS 55 was originally produced in 2004 by a number of organisations under the leadership of the Institute of Asset Management. It then underwent a substantial revision with 50 participating organisations from 15 industry sectors in 10 countries. PAS 55:2008 (available in both English and