Join the Public Consultation Process for revised quality management standard
The public consultation process for the international standards for Quality Management, ISO 9001 (Requirements) and ISO 9000 (Fundamentals and Vocabulary), is now open with UK comments requested by 31st August 2014. BSI, the UK’s National Standards Body, is leading the consultation process in the UK and interested parties within the quality management field can register their comments online.
Notably one of the most successful standards in its field worldwide, ISO 9001 has benefitted over 1.2 million organizations who are certified to it. To ensure that the standard is as relevant to organizations as ever, the revision has taken into account key changes in the first stage of the process.
Some of the key changes to the draft include:
- A restructure to align with ISO’s standardized clause sequence, core text and common terms and definition for management system standards, which will make it easier for organizations to integrate more than one discipline into an overall strategic management system. This means that the revision looks very different, yet retains the overall process approach and many of the core requirements
- There has been a change in some of the terminology used eg ‘product’ is now replaced with ‘products and services’ to make the standard more flexible to industry needs, and ‘documentation’ and ‘record’ have been replaced with ‘documented information’ to include electronic data
- The identification of risk and risk control is now integral in the standard (the requirements for “preventive action” have been removed, as the whole management system is now expected to act as a preventive tool)
- Top management involvement is now required to better align quality management with other business needs
- ‘Organizational knowledge’ is now a requirement, to determine and maintain the knowledge obtained by the organization to ensure that it can achieve conformity of products and services
The standards are now open for comment and BSI is encouraging feedback and input from interested parties within the quality management industry.
The aim of the consultation process for both ISO 9000 and ISO 9001 is to develop an international best practice standard for quality management and establish clear guidance for anyone involved in business. The drafts have been revised by global representatives from organizations across all sectors that make up the committee.
UK based comments can be made on the individual clauses through the draft review site, after which they will be considered by the UK committee before submission to the ISO committee. Comment submissions outside the UK can be made through the country’s relevant National Standards Body.
The final revised standard is expected in September 2015 subject to the feedback submitted during the consultation phase.
Anne Hayes, Head of Market Development for Governance at BSI, said: “ISO 9001 is one of the world’s major standards and as such all eyes are on this revision. The impact it has had in shaping how organizations manage the issue of quality, properly, is huge. No organization can afford to let their standards slip and we welcome the input from the international community in keeping ISO 9001 at peak performance.”
For the latest updates on revisions please visit: https://www.bsigroup.com/en-GB/iso-9001-quality-management/ISO-9001-revision-2015/
