ISO9001:2000 Update

Editorial from Quality World, December 2002

ISO 9001:2000 News Two years on in the life of ISO 9001:2000 and there is a growing nervousness in the industry about the uptake of the standard. Quality World asked the largest six certification bodies in the UK how the changeover to the new standard was going and the response was alarming. Between 65 and 91 per cent of organizations are still registered to the 1994 version and have yet to be certified to ISO 9001:2000. There is, of course, still a year to go and many are hoping there will be a sudden stampede to register to the new standard. This could mean a very busy year for the certification industry. However, the real fear is that up to 20,000 organizations will not bother with the upgrade and so will face losing registration on 15 December 2003. This would herald the biggest change to the UK certification market since ISO 9001:2000’s precursor - BS 5750 - was launched.

There is a clearly understood view that the 1994 standard and its predecessors did little to improve the quality of products or services but was much more about the quality of bureaucracy. However, ISO 9001:2000 is a major step forward and, if implemented correctly, can lead to real improvements in customer service and business performance. However, implementing ISO 9001:2000 is time consuming. It requires organizations to understand their processes and get to grips with internal audits. With such a high percentage of companies yet to make the transfer, it would seem that many organizations do not yet understand the benefits of applying ISO 9001:2000 or the time it takes to implement.