GENEVA --  A recent vote overwhelmingly approved the latest draft of the revised ISO 9001 on quality management systems, paving the way for the new version to be released next year.

The document now goes to a subcommittee review for comment disposition and final ratification.

The draft ISO 9001 is part of planned periodic review, which typically happens every three to five years. The new edition, expected in 2015, will feature some important changes, among them the introduction of the concept of risk-based thinking.

The latest draft (Draft International Standard – DIS) was received nearly 90% approval from the ISO members, enough to progress to the next stage: Final Draft International Standard (FDIS). The ISO subcommittee revising the standard will now review all comments received during the DIS vote in order to produce a final draft, which will then be put forth for ratification. Once approved, the standard can then be published.

"We are on the right track, and we are on schedule for publication," said Nigel Croft, chair of the ISO subcommittee revising the standard. "The new version is very strongly based on three basic core concepts: that process approach which was very successful in the 2008 version of the standard superimposed on that system of processes is the plan-do-check act methodology, and a third core concept which is new in the 2015 version is risk-based thinking, aiming at preventing undesirable outcomes."

ISO 9001 is one of ISO’s most well-known standards, with more than 1.1 million certificates worldwide. 

Watch Nigel Croft explain what's new and the next steps: http://youtu.be/1JIMyvpP0tw

Further reading on the difference between quality engineering and quality assurance is here. 

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