ISO 9001 - THE REVISION PROCESS COMMENCES

In March 2012, ISO members voted to revise the ISO 9001:2008 standard and, at the invitation of SPRI (the Basque Government Society for Innovation), held their first meeting in Bilbao, Spain during the week of 18 to 22 June 2012.

Bilbao is a city which symbolises renewal and it is a very appropriate origin in the journey to revise ISO’s most popular standard. Symbolic of this renewal is the Guggenheim Museum (1997) and the Iberodrola Tower (2011); both associated with famous architects, Frank Gehry and César Pelli.

What are the architects of ISO 9001:2015 planning?


ISO standards are balloted for reveiw every five years – not because the committee wants to perpetuate
itself, but to ensure that the standard is maintained as relevant and contemporary. The last revision to ISO 9001 (in 2008) was not regarded as a significant change and most of the changes were seen as “editorial”; many of the changes made then were to aid translation and to make it more readable (the change in clause 8.3, non-conforming product was a good example of this).

There is a very significant reason for revision ISO 9001 and this has been caused by the publication of Annex SL in the ISO/IEC Directive Part 1 (see page 3). This rather dull sounding publication from 2011 is very significant as it contains the template for a management system standard. All ISO management system committees are now required to reorganise the clauses to suit the template.

ISO 14001, which is also under revision, has already a six month start on ISO 9001 and has been re-organising the familiar clauses 4.1 to 4.6 into the new framework. So the first change to anticipate is that the 2015 version of ISO 9001 will be structured differently and, further, the text will change as the template text, considered to be generic for any management system standard, must be maintained unless special permission is obtained from the ISO Secretariat. It is not expected that permission will be granted lightly and only standards such as ISO 13485 (Medical Devices) will be given dispensation - in this case because ISO 13485 does not have a requirement for continual improvement.

The meeting in Bilbao did not draft a single word of a proposed ISO 9001:2015. The committee met to draft the design specification (new work item proposal) for the new standard. This is a very important document as it establishes the boundaries for the revision as well as the timeframe for the various approval stages from WD (Working Draft), to CD (Committee Draft), to DIS (Draft International Standard) to FDIS (Final Draft International Standard). Each issue from CD is translated to the main ISO languages (French and Russian) and a standard period is allowed for this translation; it is this translation time, as well as voting / comment periods, that accounts for most of the time taken to revise a standard.

This November in St. Petersburg, when the group next meets, it is hoped that the design specification will be approved and the drafting team can start the process of putting revised words on paper.

If you took part in the ISO survey, your comments are being reviewed in depth (the early results did not
include comments in foreign languages and did not look at additional comments which were not part of the “survey monkey” menu). Progressive Certification are taking part in this review and, if you have any  additional comments, please forward to us so that we can include in our national position which will be  ubmitted prior to the next meeting.

Source :  www.progressive-cert.com/