ISO reviews its ISO 9001 Quality Standard

On average, the ISO management system standards are updated about every 7 years. For example, since its original release date in 1987, the ISO 9001 Quality Management Standard was updated in 1994, 2000, 2008 and 2015.

It's now 6 years on from the most recent release and people are beginning to ask: When is the next version going to be released? Well, the answer is; Not any time soon. For, ISO has just completed a review of its most popular standard which included a survey of ISO 9001 users. The result was that no revision was considered to be needed and the latest version of ISO 9001 remains as is.

The survey indicates that 41% of respondents thought there was no need for any changes to the current standard. On face value, that hardly seems to be a ringing endorsement. However, considering that the respondents included a high number of quality management professionals, it’s perhaps no surprise that a small majority of them could think of potential improvements.

Future Maturity Model

It’s interesting that a significant number suggested a future change to a maturity model for standards. Maturity models can allow a more subtle approach to be taken for audit evaluation and may better support the principle of continuous improvement. We have been involved for some time in CSA (Cloud Security Alliance) audits. In those, the organization is evaluated against a range of criteria on a rating of 1-15. Depending on the capability level an organization demonstrates, it may be granted:

• No award (for an average score of less than 3)
• Bronze award (for an average score of 4-6)
• Silver award (for an average score of 7-9)
• Gold award (for an average score of 10+)

Audit Reports in maturity-based assessments typically include a ‘Radar' or 'Spider' chart that visually identifies performance in each audit topic. Like this example below.

This clearly indicates areas of relative performance. It would certainly seem to be a positive way to promote and reward continuous improvement.

We’ll discuss the maturity model and other ideas for improvements to ISO 9001 in this LinkedIn post. Follow us on LinkedIn to join in the conversation.

Check these links for more on the ISO article:

Article - ISO 9001 Gets Quality Check

ISO 9001 User Survey Report and Infographic

As always, Qudos will continue to keep its clients up to date on any significant developments around the ISO management system standards.