Organisations that wish to satisfy customer/consumer requirements need to define and assure the quality of their products or services provided. To achieve this organizations need to become familiar with the philosophy of Quality Assurance Management and moreover develop and implement a Quality Management System. This module offers an overview of various aspects which are directly related to the successful design and implementation of an organisation’s quality assurance system.  More specifically, standards are an integral part of quality assurance systems as they define the parameters that need to be considered and monitored in an organisation’s process in order to achieve quality. Furthermore this module explains why and how certification bodies are accredited in order to be eligible to certify organizations according to specific standards. External or internal audits are an important tool to verify that organisations function according to the standards set within their quality assurance systems and provide information in order to take relevant preventive and corrective actions and thus succeed in continuous improvement. Finally legislation concerning labeling for quality assurance is considered.

This module consists of the following sections:

• Standards (Units 2-4); this section describes the history and philosophy of standards, analyses standards’ requirements and relates standards to legislation requirements.
• Certifications (Units 5-6); this section examines International and National Certification Bodies, their scope of function and the procedure required for accreditation
• Audits (Units 7-9);  this section is concerned with external audits, external auditors, internal audits, internal auditors and the procedure for audit design and implementation
• Labeling (Unit 10); this section studies international and local legislation around the areas of CE marking and Quality Control marking.