ISO 9001:2008 Brings More Clarity to QMS Standard

Although the recently released ISO 9001:2008 contains no new requirements compared to the 2000 edition, it does clarify existing requirements of ISO 9001:2000.

Released last November, ISO 9001:2008 is the latest edition of the International Standard used by many automotive companies and other organizations as the framework for their quality management systems (QMS). The ISO 9000 family of standards represents an international consensus on good quality management practices. It consists of standards and guidelines relating to quality management systems and related supporting standards.



ISO 9001:2008, Quality management system –Requirements, is the fourth edition of the standard first published in 1987, and it has become a global benchmark for providing assurance about the ability to satisfy quality requirements and to enhance customer satisfaction in supplier-customer relationships.

ISO 9001:2008 provides a set of standardized requirements for a quality management system, regardless of what the user organization does, its size, or whether it is in the private or public sector. It is the only standard in the ISO 9000 family to which organizations can be certified, although certification is not a compulsory requirement of the standard.

Why a New Standard Now?
All ISO standards are periodically reviewed. To ensure that ISO standards are maintained at the state of the art, the organization has a rule requiring them to be periodically reviewed and a decision made to confirm, withdraw, or revise the documents.

As it turns out, ISO 9001:2008 contains no new requirements compared to the 2000 edition (which it replaces); however, it does provide clarifications to the existing requirements of ISO 9001:2000 based on eight years’ experience of implementing the standard worldwide. The updated standard also introduces changes to improve consistency with the environmental management system standard, ISO 14001:2004.

The review of ISO 9001 has benefited from a number of inputs, including the following:
* A justification study against the criteria of ISO Guide 72:2001, Guidelines for the justification
and development of management system standards;
* Feedback from the ISO/TC 176 interpretations process;
* A two-year systematic review of ISO 9001:2000 within ISO/TC 176/SC2;
* A worldwide user survey carried out by ISO/TC 176/SC 2; and
* Further data from national surveys.

“The revised ISO 9001 results from a structured process giving weight to the needs of users and to the likely impacts and benefits of the revisions,” says ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden. “ISO 9001:2008 is therefore the outcome of a rigorous examination confirming its fitness for use as the international benchmark for quality management.”

An introduction and support package of documents explaining the differences between ISO 9001:2008 and the year 2000 version is available on the ISO website.

Why Implement 9001:2008?

Although certification of conformity to ISO 9001 is not a requirement of the standard, it is frequently used in the automotive sector to increase confidence in an organization’s products and services, in the selection of suppliers, and in the right to tender for procurement contracts.

The ISO 9001:2008 standard provides a tried and tested framework for taking a systematic approach to managing the organization's processes so that they consistently turn out products that satisfy customers' expectations. Simply put, the standard lays down what requirements a quality system must meet, but does not dictate how they should be met in any particular organization. This leaves great scope and flexibility for implementation in different business sectors and business cultures, as well as in different national cultures.

The standard requires the organization to:
* Audit its ISO 9001:2008-based quality system to verify that it is managing processes effectively—or to put it another way, to check that it is fully in control of its activities.
* Invite its clients to audit the quality system to give them confidence that the organization is capable of delivering products or services that will meet their requirements.
* Engage the services of an independent quality system certification body to obtain an ISO 9001:2008 certificate of conformity. This last option has proved extremely popular in the marketplace because of the perceived credibility of an independent assessment.

An obvious benefit to implementing ISO 9001:2008 is that the supplier may avoid multiple audits by its customers and reduce the frequency or duration of customer audits. The certificate can also serve as a business reference between the organization and potential clients, especially when supplier and client are new to each other, or far removed geographically, as in an export scenario.

AIAG offers world-class training to assist your organization in ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System certification. For more information, contact AIAG customer service at (248) 358-3003 or visit the AIAG Web site at www.aiag.org.