Michelle: You've written a few great articles for Quality about standards and they were very popular with our readers. Can you tell us what's new with standards today?

Andy: Yes, indeed. So, the biggest news, I guess, is that ISO 9001 and the other documents that go with it, ISO 9000, ISO 9004, and the ISO TS 9002, are all currently being updated.

The ISO standards process is that all standards, and there are something like 27,000, I believe was the last count, product standards, safety standards, all those kinds of things. They all go through a five-year cycle of review, just to make sure that they're up to date, they're still pertinent, keep in line with the needs of the marketplace users and so on. And ISO 9001 is no different in that respect.

So, we're currently midstream, if you like. The process was started back in 2020 and we're on target to have the release I believe in the fourth quarter of 2026. So, there's a lot of information that's being published particularly on social media platforms but for the most part is purely speculation because most of the committee members, including people like myself, we actually don't know. It's held pretty close until a draft is made available for comment. But at the moment, it's information gathering by a small group and they're working on those proposed changes. It'll come out to a wider audience later on. Perhaps this year, there's some more meetings to be held. But we should look forward, I think, to a fourth quarter 2026 release for ISO 9001.

The other one, of course, is the one I wrote about, ISO 19011. That's fairly close to being published. That may be quarter one next year. So those are really, if you're in the quality management arena, those are really the two biggest pieces of news.

Michelle: Yeah, always definitely something to watch on a new standard coming out. I like that there's always a lot of anticipation and waiting and deciding or listening like, is it this year? Is it next year? What's the quarter?

Andy: That's right. There was a little bit of slip, but I think it's fairly true to say that we're trying to write a standard that's good for 177 nations, many of whom not English, English isn't their native language. So, we're trying to meet a lot of the needs and expectations of a wide variety of organizations, not just manufacturing.