Quality, safety and environmental control standards are becoming part of daily requirements for most industries and economic activities. New and emerging regulations, and a system of voluntary compliance, pose considerable new challenges, in particular for SMEs.

The ISO 9000 quality standards are already widely accepted throughout the industry; in the environmental domain two different systems are competing in the marketplace: ISO 14001 and EMAS.

In the safety area, emerging standards for occupational safety, the manipulation of hazardous substances and hazardous waste, as well as internal and external emergency management pose new resposnibilities on industry.

The need for integrated, efficient and cost-effective tools including training, and a trans-national approach in an increasingle fast paced and internation market, is evident.

Modern information systems, and in particular expert systems technology, multi-media systems, and the power of distributed network computing in intranet/extranet environments provide the basis for new solutions.

The aim of the IQEM project is to develop, within a flexible artificial intelligence environment, a modular set of integrated tools for quality control procedures, environmental management, and safety management an intranet/extranet environment for combined ISO 9000, ISO 14001, EMAS and safety management.