ISO/TC 176/SC 2 Current Activities

ISO/TC 176/SC2 Quality Systems held its 32nd plenary meeting in Helsinki, Finland, during 11- 15 June 2007.

The main purpose of the meeting was for Working Group 18 (WG18) to progress the development of the amendment to ISO 9001:2000 and the revision to ISO 9004:2000.

In addition, concurrent meetings of ISO/TC 176/SC1/WG1 on the ISO 9000:2005 standard and of the ISO/TC 176/WG on Interpretations were held.

The meetings were attended by delegations from 36 countries and 8 liaison members, with some 122 delegates participating.

After lengthy deliberations, it was agreed that the work on the amendment to ISO 9001:2000 had reached the point of maturity where it should advance to the Draft International Standard stage, and should not be circulated as a second Committee Draft (CD).

In contrast, the work on revising ISO 9004:2000 is proving to be a more difficult task, involving a complete re-writing of the standard to address "Managing for sustainable success – a quality management approach". Many ideas and approaches are being proposed and discussed, and it is taking a little longer to mature. As a result, it was agreed that a second CD of ISO 9004 will be issued for review and comment, and then after incorporating these comments a 3rd CD will be issued for ballot.

These pragmatic decisions were based on the progress of the work; however they have one major consequence, which is the two standards will no longer follow concurrent development paths. The next edition of ISO 9001 is expected to achieve publication around October 2008, whereas the next edition of ISO 9004 is not expected until August 2009.

The work was well supported by inputs from ISO/TC 176/SC 1/WG1 on terminology and also from ISO/TC 176/WG Interpretations who were reviewing the draft of ISO 9001 to see if we had removed the need for some of the sanctioned interpretations of the standard. ISO/TC 176/SC 2 is grateful to both of these working groups for their assistance.

In addition to the main drafting groups, WG18/TG 1.21 which is responsible for undertaking verification and validation on the drafts, and WG18/TG 1.22 for communications and product support, also met in Helsinki.

WG18/TG 1.21 reported that the two draft standards were on track from a verification viewpoint, and also how overwhelmingly positive the response to their pilot validation programme on the initial CDs of the standards had been. Over 100 companies had participated in this pilot programme, and they provided excellent feedback on the changes to the standards. The responses were collated, analysed and transmitted to the drafting groups as a key input into their work.

WG18/TG 1.22 continued its work to develop a Top Management brochure, which will include a self assessment guidance tool, to help top managers understand the quality maturity of their organizations, and to provide guidance within the ISO 9000 family of documents on improving their performance. Additionally, TG 1.22 undertook further development of its communications and product support plans to accompany the publication of the amended and revised standards. .

Helsinki was a wonderful location for the meeting, with a week of bright sunshine and high summer temperatures; although the long hours of daylight did cause some confusion. The Helsinki Fair Centre is a modern comfortable venue, and greatly facilitated our work.




Helsinki Fair Centre




Overriding all of this was the wonderful support and hospitality provided by SFS, the Finnish Standards Association, and their staff, to whom we are eternally grateful.



Sirpa Sipola, Virve Ukkonen, Anne-Mari Miikkala
(our fantastic support team)

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