The proposed 2008 revision to ISO 9001 has been postponed until mid 2009.

The reason seems to be that the writers couldn’t gain consensus on all the changes.

The proposed changes in the working draft involve 24 possible changes to 17 of the requirements. This is more extensive than originally proposed and has delayed elevating the working draft to the status of committee draft. The revision cannot move forward until a consensus is reached.

The disagreement revolves around some proposals that would be more suited for reference documents opposed to the actual standard.

Speaking of reference documents, the proposed changes to ISO 9004 are extensive. The revision is currently titled “Managing for Sustainability”. Here’s a sneak peak at the Table of Contents that is currently being considered:

Contents
Foreword
Introduction
0.1 General
0.2 Relationship with ISO 9001
0.3 Compatibility with other management standards
0.4 Relationship with performance excellence models
1 Scope
2 Normative references
3 Terms and definitions
4 Quality management principles
5 Management Responsibility
6 The organization's identity
6.1 General
6.2 Establishing an organization's identity
6.3 Sustaining the organization's identity
7 The organization's environment
7.1 General
7.2 The organization and its external environment
7.3 The organization and its interested parties
8 Mission, vision and strategy
8.1 General
8.2 Mission and Vision
8.3 Strategy
8.3.1 Aspects of strategy
8.3.2 Gap identification and risk management
8.4 Policies and objectives
8.5 Review of strategy
9 Structure and Communication
9.1 Structure
9.2 Communication
9.2.1 General
9.2.2 Communication effectiveness
10 Business planning
10.1 General
10.2 Identification of an organization's capability profile
10.3 Alignment to the organization’s strategy
11 Resources Management
11.1 General
11.2 Planning of resources
11.3 Resource allocation
11.4 Financial resources
11.5 Infrastructure
11.6 Work environment
11.7 Intellectual resources
11.8 Effective utilization of natural resources
12 People in the organization
13 Processes
13.1 General
13.2 Type of processes
13.3 Identification of processes in the organization
13.4 The roles and responsibilities of a process owner
13.5 Objective setting for each process
14 Measurement and analysis
14.1 Why measure and analyze
14.2 The essentials of effective measurement and objective setting
14.3 Making effective use of measurement processes
15 Continual improvement
15.1 General
15.2 Why is “process level” improvement important?
15.3 Why are timely “strategic level” review and improvement important?
15.4 Managing Improvement
15.5 Learning
15.5.1 General
15.5.2 Factors influencing learning effectiveness
15.5.3 Sources of Learning
15.6 Innovation
15.6.1 General
15.6.2 Factors influencing the effectiveness of the innovation process
15.6.3 Planning of the Innovation process
Annex A (Informative) Self-assessment tools

The content of this ISO 9004 revision doesn’t follow the standard as have the previous revisions. My initial reaction is that this could really be a reference worth using. However, only time will tell.

If the ISO 9001 revision is not issued until mid 2009 this could conceivably put the revision after that into or close to 2020.

I’ll let you know when I hear more.

Wishing you all the best,
Hal Futhey
President
QPA - Quality Training and Consulting

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