A framework for your own quality manual
This section contains a specimen quality manual on which you may base or compare your own quality manual. The quality system described in the manual conforms to ISO 9001:2000 so as to cover as many clauses a possible. If you are temped to take a short-cut and base your own system on this manual, make sure that it really does relate to your Quality Management System. No off-the-shelf package can ever be tailored perfectly to every situation. But used carefully, it will help you grasp what the essential contents of the manual should be and provide in many cases the phrases and structure that can be translated easily into your own environment.

A Quality Manual table of contents may look similar to the example shown below

Quality Manual: Table of contents
Number	Section	Page
1.	General	4
1.1.	Index and revision status	4
1.2.	Purpose and scope	4
1.3.	Exclusions	4
2.	Company background	5
2.1.	Company background	5
2.2.	Company history	5
3.	Definitions and conventions	5
3.1.	Definitions and terminology	5
3.2.	Abbreviations	6
4.	Quality management system	6
4.1.	General requirements	6
4.2.	Documentation requirements	6
5.	Management responsibility	8
5.1.	Management responsibility	8
5.2.	Customer focus	8
5.3.	Quality policy	9
5.4.	Quality system planning	9
5.5.	Organization and communication	10
5.6.	Management review	12
6.	Resource Management	13
6.1.	Provision of resources	13
6.2.	Human resources and training	14
6.3.	Infrastructure and work environment	15
7.	Product realization	15
7.1.	Planning of product realization	15
7.2.	Customer related processes	17
7.3.	Design	17
7.4.	Purchasing	18
7.5.	Operations	18
7.6.	Inspection, measurement and test equipment	20
8.	Measurement, analysis and improvement	21
8.1.	Planning of monitoring and measuring	21
8.2.	Monitoring and measurement	21
8.3.	Control of non-conforming product or service	25
8.4.	Analysis of quality information	25
8.5.	Continual improvement	26