QMS & EMS London

Due to globalization and advancing technology, today’s manufacturing environment is increasingly competitive. Therefore, the accuracy and quality of machined durable goods is extremely important if a company wants to stay competitive. Of course, having the necessary equipment to perform the inspection of these parts is critical and can require large capital investments. Many manufacturing companies include a quality control department that will verify manufactured parts, as well as the tools used to produce parts. The measured results need to conform to standards and specifications provided by the customer. The most common machines to do this are coordinate measuring machines (CMMs), optical comparators, and video inspection machines.

Another significant change in the proposed revision to 14001 is the broadening of the scope of the EMS to consider environmental impacts throughout organisations’ value chains. The draft standard states that users should identify environmental aspects that it can control and “those it can influence considering a life-cycle perspective”.

ISO 14001, the international systems standard for environment management, has stood at the heart of organisations’ efforts to understand and reduce their impacts on the natural world for nearly two decades. More than 250,000 certificates have been issued globally, and they are held by organisations as diverse as multinational oil producers, local waste collectors and individual sports venues.

Companies are starting to incorporate sustainability into their marketing, corporate communications, annual reports and their actions – whether it is designing and constructing a major infrastructure project or producing a household product.  To effectively integrate sustainability, it must be a key theme in programme management methodologies and practices, in the same way as cost, delivery and efficiency. 

Bean-to-cup coffee makers manufactured at De’Longhi can produce a cup of coffee by just feeding beans at the touch of a button. These machines include a boiler, grinder, brewing unit, and in most cases, a steamer. The machines are manufactured on assembly lines with each unit individually manufactured and tested before the finished system is assembled.  In late 2006, De’Longhi began another process of evaluating that testing procedure, the goal being to implement a system to guarantee the quality of every finished coffee maker leaving its site. A main reason for achieving this was for complete product testing. There was also a desire to quantify the product quality. 

Researchers working to design new materials that are durable, lightweight, and environmentally sustainable are increasingly looking to natural composites, such as bone, for inspiration.  Bone is strong and tough because its two constituent materials, soft collagen protein and stiff hydroxyapatite mineral, are arranged in complex hierarchical patterns that change at every scale of the composite, from the micro up to the macro. 

For more than 15 years, organisations wanting to lessen their environmental impacts have used ISO 14001 as a framework to understand how their operations affect the natural world and to combat harmful outputs. Alongside waste management, pollution prevention and resource efficiency, many businesses have examined their energy consumption under 14001 as a way of lowering greenhouse-gas emissions. However, dramatic increases in energy costs, coupled with the introduction of mandatory requirements to lower emissions, such as the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency scheme, have lifted energy efficiency to the top of many organisations’ environmental agendas.