ISO 9000 is a family of standards for quality management systems (QMS) developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It provides a standardized model for QMS created through international consensus. ISO 9001 is the specification standard in this series. ISO 9000 is primarily concerned with quality management. This means anything that affects a product or service required by a customer and what that organization does to ensure that a certain standard of quality is achieved and maintained.

An organization can self-declare its compliance with the requirements or obtain external validation, usually by third-party registration/certification. As with other management system models developed by the ISO, the model is based on Deming’s PDCA cycle for continual improvement. Currently, more than half a million sites worldwide have obtained third-party ISO 9001 certification. In some cases, customers require their suppliers to achieve this level of validation to remain in the supply chain.
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See also: ISO; ISO 14000