Summary

A catchword has been doing the rounds for some time now: IS0 9000. Paper manufac- turers claim they have used it to keep control over the quality of their product, ink suppliers strive to follow their example, and even some printing press manufacturers do not want to miss the boat here. Within the printing industry, it is the packaging printers who have acted as pioneers. The reason they put forward for this is that their customers, especially the pharmaceutical industry with its need for absolutely error-free directions printed on the boxes for use, demand it. So far, no advertising agency has had the idea of demanding the same of the newspaper printing companies. Because IS0 9000 is not a mark of quality that can be manipulated, but rather a guideline to a new quality consciousness in which the certificate is just a means within the method, and the method of avoiding errors leads to considerable cost and time savings, we have decided to deal with this topic in a Special Report in order to inform our members as comprehensively and as early as possible. With a series of previous Special Reports, we have already laid the foundation for the establishment of a generally applicable quality assurance system in newspaper plants. IS0 9000 provides the linking framework, thus ensuring that the individual measures become parts of a whole, i.e. g "company-wide quality control", or "Total Quality Control (TQC)" respectively, that is in line with the scientific and technological state of the art.