The new revised version of ISO 9001: 2015, the world’s most popular standard for quality management, has already been published. This is the first major revision of the standard since 2000 and has been written taking into account current business challenges and organizations of any size in many different industries.
Since the last major revision that was made in the year 2000, the way of doing business has changed enormously. Today we all have instant access to information and higher expectations of the organizations we work with, while dealing with more complex supply chains and a competitive global economy, so the ISO 9001:2015 standard has been revised with this in mind. The changes made make the standard flexible enough to offer multiple benefits to organizations, being not only a tool for quality management, but an important framework for business improvement, providing greater efficiency and improving customer satisfaction.
This review also incorporates suggested changes according to the feedback received from users and experts from around the world and represents the latest best practices in how to manage and control quality in all operations. The ISO 9001 standard has benefited millions of organizations around the world, having user reports with increased growth and productivity as well as significantly higher retention and customer satisfaction.
The crucial terms for the understanding of the ISO 9001 standard are defined in the ISO 9000 standard, which has also been revised, both standards being published on last September 23.
Some of the main changes are the following:
- Greater emphasis on the construction of a management system suited to the particular needs of each organization.
- It is added as a requirement that the highest levels of an organization must be involved and accountable for their participation, aligning quality with a broader business strategy.
- Thinking based on the risk contained throughout the standard, makes the entire management system a preventive tool and encourages continuous improvement..
- Less mandatory requirements for documentation: the organization can now decide what information needs to be documented and in what format it should be.
- Alignment with other fundamental rules of the management system through the use of a common structure and a central text.