Perhaps only the medical field compares to the aerospace industry in the level of quality required to execute its mission. Millions of passengers fly millions of miles around the globe, with nary a thought. People enter a shiny tube and exit hours later into a completely different part of the world, a feat reserved only for the gods a century earlier. Once an item is launched into space, it, for all intents and purposes, cannot be maintained or repaired. These marvels of modern life can only be accomplished by complying to standards set at an international level. The ISO 9001 quality management series is the basis for AS 9100,  a quality management system designed specifically for the aerospace and defense industries. AS 9100 encompasses and expands on ISO 9001 requirements to suit the quality system needs of these very exacting industries. As ISO 9001 changes periodically, AS 9100 also changes to fall in line with the new version of ISO 9001. Here is a closer look at what AS 9100 entails in comparison with the ISO 9001 series. The International Organization for Standardization itself does not update and maintain the new versions of AS 9100. The International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG) decides which changes to ISO 9001 to incorporate into updated versions of AS 9100. In a word, AS 9100 takes ISO 9001 and adapts it to suit the sensitive nature of aerospace and defense.