ISO

The International Organization for Standardization, widely known as ISO, is an international-standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded in February of 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary industrial and commercial standards.

ISO 9000 is a family of standards for quality management systems. ISO 9000 is maintained by ISO, the International Organization for Standardization and is administered by accreditation and certification bodies. The rules are updated, as the requirements motivate changes over time. Some of the requirements in ISO 9001:2008 (which is one of the standards in the ISO 9000 family) include:

• a set of procedures that cover all key processes in the business;
• monitoring processes to ensure they are effective;
• keeping adequate records;
• checking output for defects, with appropriate and corrective action where necessary;
• regularly reviewing individual processes and the quality system itself for effectiveness; and
• facilitating continual improvement

A company or organization that has been independently audited and certified to be in conformance with ISO 9001 may publicly state that it is "ISO 9001 certified" or "ISO 9001 registered". Certification to an ISO 9001 standard does not guarantee any quality of end products and services; rather, it certifies that formalized business processes are being applied.

Mil-Spec

A United States defense standard, often called a military standard, "MIL-STD", "MIL-SPEC", or (informally) "MilSpecs", is used to help achieve standardization objectives by the U.S. Department of Defense. Mil-Spec is primarily designed to ensure products meet certain requirements dealing with reliability. These defense standards are also used by other non-defense government organizations that wish to achieve higher levels of quality and reliability.