Transitioning from QS-9000 to ISO/TS 16949

Finally, ISO/TS 16949:2002 Harmonizes the Automotive Industry and Embraces ISO 9001:2000!

Most organizations doing business in the automotive industry have achieved compliance to an ISO 9000 based quality management system (QMS) standard, such as QS-9000:1998. The International Automotive Task Force (IATF), in conjunction with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), collaborated to develop ISO/TS 16949:2002, an automotive industry standard containing ISO 9001:2000 in its entirety and automotive requirements and guidelines intended to replace QS-9000 (and several other automotive standards like it around the globe). Automotive manufacturers world-wide have adopted the new standard and many have already issued direction to their supply base to phase out the old automotive QMS standards and transition to ISO/TS 16949 over the next few years.

So, many organizations want to know “what’s the fundamental differences between the old and the new automotive QMS standards?” In a nutshell, two things, including an increased focus on:

Cross-functional Processes: through the process and system approaches advocated by ISO 9001:2000 and,

‘Customer-Owned Processes’ (particularly manufacturing processes): which must be reviewed/approved by the customer as a condition of doing business.

The system approach advocated by ISO 9001:2000 requires an organization to depict the ‘sequence and interaction’ of its QMS processes, in particular it’s cross-functional business processes. The overall objective is to ensure that the outputs of each process are truly what are needed (as inputs) to processes managed by other functions/departments in the organization. Managing these interfaces requires increased communications between functions/departments to ensure effectiveness.

The process approach requires that each process be defined in terms of required inputs, process steps/activities, outputs (or desired results), and controls put in place to assure process effectiveness (i.e. desired result were achieved). The overall objective is to ensure process inputs are defined/verified prior to use, that methods for converting these inputs be defined/proven prior to deployment, that outputs (or desired results) be defined/verified before being passed on to the next process.

TS 16949:2002 takes the process approach a step further by requiring an organization to conduct process audits (usually of manufacturing processes ‘owned by the customer) to ensure they are both effective and efficient. The bottom line, if a customer ‘owns’ a process (as defined by contracts, specifications, etc.) then the organization must manage that process to ensure all related objectives are achieved. In the automotive industry, customers will require an organization to ‘prove’ their ability to do work through submission and approval of manufacturing capability/feasibility studies, product/manufacturing designs, product/process control plans, production part approval submittals, and more.

In addition, ISO/TS 16949:2002 requires the organization to conduct product audits to assess conformance to requirements, and process audits (usually of manufacturing processes they own) to ensure continuing process capability, stability and performance as well as to assess variability/waste as inputs to the improvement process.

So, ISO/TS 16949:2002 does not really require anything new (at least nothing that wasn’t always intended) … it just wants to further ensure that an organization can perform the work they claim they can do! Suppliers to the automotive industry must be better prepared to demonstrate that they are effectively and efficiently their part … and continually looking for ways to improve!

IsoQual’s ISO/TS 16949:2002 Transition Package contains a quality manual and some other key management/assessment tools needed to effectively and efficiently transition to the new automotive standards.