New Release: ISO 9004:2018 – Quality management – Quality of an organization – Guidance to achieve sustained success.
Success is certainly something that every organization and individual should strive for. However, success can be relative, impermanent, and even misunderstood. Due to its complex and possibly volatile nature, success may bless organizations for only a moment, or it can drive organizations to span an entire century.
ISO 9004:2018 offers guidelines for enhancing an organization’s ability to achieve sustained success. It does this by considering the quality of an organization, which it defines as the degree to which the inherent characteristics of the organization fulfill the needs and expectations of its customers and other interested parties. This standard makes use of quality management principles given in ISO 9000:2015.
ISO 9004:2018 doesn’t mess around in meeting its objective. While it is applicable to any organization, regardless of size, type, or activity, ISO 9004:2018 is direct in the core philosophy of how to achieve sustained success. This involves adapting to the ever-rapidly changing factors affecting an organization’s success—social responsibility, environmental and cultural factors, efficiency, quality, and agility.
ISO 9004:2018 recommends the involvement of top management for understanding the context of the organization, factoring in external and internal issues, determining the identity of the organization (including its mission, vision, values, and culture), making use of process and resource management, considering the infrastructure and work environment, and utilizing self-assessment. Ultimately, these efforts strive for consistently meeting the needs and expectations of interested parties over the long term. Short- and medium-term objectives should support this long-term strategy.
ISO 9004:2018 is the fourth edition of the standard for achieving sustained success, and it cancels and replaces the 2009 version of the same document. This standard update was necessary due to the need to include a few key concepts, and it was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 176, Quality management and quality assurance, Subcommittee 2, Quality systems.
ISO 9004:2018 now aligns with the concepts and terminology of ISO 9000:2015 and ISO 9001:2015. These ideas were integral to the revision of these two standards a few years ago. The new standard for achieving sustained success also places a focus on the concepts of “quality of an organization” and “identity of an organization.”
For users of the previous edition of the international standard, there is ISO 9004:2018 Plus Redline – Quality management – Quality of an organization – Guidance to achieve sustained success (includes Redline Version), which clearly identifies any changes made to the standard from the 2009 edition.
ISO 9004:2018 is also available as part of the following standards packages:
ISO 9000 / ISO 9001 / ISO 9004 / ISO 19011 – Quality Management Package
ISO 9004:2018 – Quality management – Quality of an organization – Guidance to achieve sustained success is available on the ANSI Webstore.
Hello,
I am one of the FEW quality professional -worldwide who have bothered to go through the previous versions of ISO-9004.
I want to check through you as to whether my use of the term ‘FEW quality professionals -worldwide’ is correct. How many quality professionals across the world have gone through the standard; and further; how many have really used the standard even partly.
Kind regards and thanks.
Virendra gupta
Hello,
You should contact the quality systems subcommittee ISO/TC 176/SC 2. Since they develop this standard, they may be best suited to answer your questions. Their information is listed here: https://www.iso.org/committee/53896.html.
Regards, your use of the term “FEW quality professional” is unfortunately correct and I agree with it!
Zlatko