From July 1999

New User Friendly ISO 9000

Even before the last (1994) revision to the ISO standard had been introduced work had begun on its successor.

One of the primary objectives set by the committee working on the update was to establish a series of generic standards applicable to any types of organisation regardless of its size or the type of products or services being supplied. Mark Woods, managing partner at Statius Management Services, commented: "This has forced the standard to become far more user friendly".

Proposed changes to the series include:

• Merging ISO 9001, 9002 & 9003 into a single ISO 9001 standards based on a business process model (see diagram below)
• Developing ISO 9001 & ISO 9004, its sister guidance note as a "consistent pair" dealing respectively with requirements (9001) & guidance (9004) and ensuring that there are clear links between the two documents.
• Ensuring compatibility with other management system standards, for instance the environmental standard ISO 14000

The new ISO standards will be structured identically with four main headings:

• Management responsibility
• Resource management
• Process management (product or service realisation)
• Measurement, analysis & improvement

Although the draft standard is completely different, each of the current 20 elements are clearly identifiable, the big change is the introduction of the "improvement element".

The final changes of the draft are now being made the final draft being due for publication in August 2000 with the standard being issued in November 2000. As with previous revisions to the standard Statius would expect that the accreditation agencies will allow 12-18 months for the changes to come into force and be reflected in the client company's quality system.