XML-based IS09000 electronic document management system

Maintaining, customizing, sharing and reusing ISO9000 quality documents are essential for many organizations, especially those who work as virtual enterprises (VE). In a VE, the documents must be shared among organizations to take the full advantages of the recent Internet advances. XML is a new browser-based language standard. The purpose of this research is to explore the capabilities of XML and Internet technologies in electronic document management environments to comply with the ISO9000 requirements. This research has demonstrated several XML-enabled examples beneficial for the main functions of ISO9000 document management such as document creation, document change, document control and document access. The implemented examples demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiencies of document customizing, querying, hierarchical linking, tracking and reusing. The research results solve the ISO9000 document-related problems among working partners and facilitate document flow and information integration of value chain. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.