Looking Forward with your Company’s ISO 9001 Certification Program (Demo)

Things are afoot in the race to be awarded the International Standards Organization’s (ISO) ISO 9001 label. Dan Nelson reports in his article for Quality Digest:

Based on a reading of the ISO 9001:2015 Committee Draft (CD), the 2015 standard will further clarify and emphasize the requirement to apply a process approach. Although the requirement has been resident in the standard since 2000, this fundamental requirement has been overlooked often enough to warrant further clarification and emphasis in the upcoming standard. ISO 9001:2015 will further promote the process approach beyond the existing requirements of ISO 9001:2008 in at least three clear ways. First, how does ISO 9001:2008 promote a process approach?

Quality control insiders and veteran ISO 9001 label holders may be having mixed receptions about the proposed revision to the standards. The project has been underway since June 2012, and the CD was released to interested parties in April 2013. Since December 2012, the ISO has geared for comments and a ballot vote on the draft International Standard in March 2014. The ISO is looking at the final publication of the ISO 9001:2015 standard in September 2015. For a company or organization looking ahead to the future under the 2015 standard, they will need an ISO 9001 certification service like the International Standards Authority Inc to steer them in the right direction. Getting ready for the 2015 standard will require refreshers of ISO 9001:2008. Nelson notes that several quality management systems (QMS) were reportedly designed as compliant under ISO9001 requirements, when no such provisions existed under the 2008 standard. Instead, the standard mandates the organizations themselves to create the processes needed for the QMS, under the plan-do-check-act cycle (PDCA). The 2015 CD’s subclause 4.2.2 has since stated the application of a process approach to the organization’s QMS. Further fine-tuning may be expected in case your organization opts to assemble a new QMS. Item B of CD subclause 4.2.2 states that they should “determine the inputs required and the outputs expected from each process,” further underlining a break from standard-based QMS formulation to PDCA-centric strategies. The leadership is expected to spearhead the reforms under 9001:2015, Nelson says, citing CD 5.1.1 Item C, stating that the process-driven QMS should be implemented into current practices at the senior level. The projected launch of ISO9001:2015 is still far off, but it does not mean current ISO9001 holders should slip up in implementing quality control in the organization. A company skilled at ISO certification 9001 such as ISA will not leave you in the cold. (Article Information and Image from Three Ways ISO 9001:2015 Will Encourage a Process Approach, Quality Digest, December 8, 2013)