International Organization for Standardization (ISO)

The world largest standards developing organization. The ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 families are among ISO's best known standards and are implemented by over a million organizations in 161 countries. The ISO 9000 family addresses "quality management". This means what the organization does to fulfill: the customer's quality requirements, and applicable regulatory requirements, while aiming to enhance customer satisfaction, and achieve continual improvement of its performance in pursuit of these objectives. The ISO 14000 family addresses "environmental management". This means what the organization does to: minimize harmful effects on the environment caused by its activities, and to achieve continual improvement of its environmental performance. Milliken uses Life Cycle Inventories and Life Cycle Analyses against the ISO 14040 standard to evaluate components and their impact on the environment. Milliken was the first U.S. company to obtain carpet-manufacturing certification for the ISO 9000 Series Standards for quality management. All textile plants were certified to ISO 14001?the highest global standard for environmental responsibility by the end of 2002.