Will the to-be-released ISO 9001 (2015) standard be once more a scheme for quality management systems?  Or will it – hopefully – have grown up to become quality-leading systems?  Huge question.  Let me explain:

IT’S ALL ABOUT MANAGEMENT!
Because managers are not leaders, and vice-versa.  Ask any Ship’s Captain and it’s no First Officer. Any Ship’s Captain has authority to marry you on-board, the First Officer hasn’t.

When ISO developed a public questionnaire on its website requesting suggestions on how to improve the best selling ISO Standard 9001, I duly answered, and made it clear that the standard’s ‘Achilles’ heel is not Documentation, but Management.

I think that managers are the real weakest point of any organization.  Any fish swims to where its head goes.

MONEY AND QUALITY
Of course, Documentation Control is fairly easy stuff, it has barely anything to do with money, while Management has overwhelming control over finance.

So, will ISO 9001:2015 be named a standard for ‘quali-money management systems’?

Quality itself is no joke.  Money itself is no joke.  It’s the uses that are made of them that are often jokes.

Remember Agent 007’s lover Mrs. Moneypenny has a significant name; and her character, in all 007’s movies, confirm her consistency: money AND quality.

So, this – let me say – algebra binomial is not far off our professional targets: money and quality can be balanced.

The problem is, that the way doesn’t depend only on the will, the World is not so simple, it never was, and will be.  When the ISO/TC 176 Thinkers had in mind interacting systems’ processes, they hit the bull-eye. Unfortunately, their vocabulary, semantics and  syntactics were – and still are – inadequate to make their thinking comprehensible.

Therefore we – Subjects to the Standard – have to read between the lines, and to imagine …

Depending on specific Registrar’s or Accreditation Body stand-point, one – or more – ISO 9001’s requirement dominates the others. Be it Documentation control or Caliper control, not one of them goes beyond scratching the system surface: that is, SYSTEM CONTROL, which is the ultimate clue of any effective system.

As we were informed of, IATF’s ISO/TS 16949 major nonconformity hit parade lists system control failures first. When we’ll book our travel ticket to Canossa, and spray our hair with ash?

Let’s face it: management systems sail more and more away from quality, environment, social accountability, work environment health and safety, unless subsidized by more or less local governmental money.

Entrepreneurs, unless bonded by their Customers for Registration, would flee from ISO registration’s costly, clumsy, practically worthless regulations.

RISK MANAGEMENT
Now we hear that the next ISO 9001 will sail toward the far Risk Management Isles: but isn’t there an ISO 31000 Guideline on Risk Management, already?

Will ISO 9001:2015 sound as the same symphony that ISO started in 1994, that is, publish to sell, or will it be a risk leading standard?

We look forward to seeing what happens.