improving mss alignment ims 5-2009 e

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ISO INSIDER

ISO group works to improve alignmentof management system standards

by Dick Hortensius

In 2006, ISO’s Technical Man-

agement Board (ISO/TMB)

established the Technical Co-

ordination Group (JTCG) tocoordinate the development

o ISO management system

standards with a view to en-

hancing their consistency and

alignment. This article de-

scribes the background and

presents the contents o the

proposals made by the JTCG.

It refects the views o the au-

thor, who is Secretary o the

JTCG, but should not neces-

sarily be taken as the ocial

position o the JTCG.

The JTCG has met several

times over the last two years

and at the the end o April

2009 (ollowing its 5th meeting,

in Costa Rica on 30 March)

submitted important proposals

or all ISO technical commit-

tees involved in the develop-

ment o management system

standards (MSS).

These proposals cover the

establishment o a common

structure with identical head-

ings or clauses and sub-claus-

es or all ISO MSS and a com-

mon core vocabulary.

The ISO committees consult-

ed were requested to provide

their comments by the end o

July 2009. It is the objectiveo the JTCG to start drat-

ingcommontextforaccepted

identical system elements lat-

er this year. This article brie-

ly describes the background

and contents o the proposals

rom the JTCG.

The first years of ISO MSS

It is 22 years since the rst ISO

management system standard

was published in 1987 – the

rst edition o ISO 9001 or

quality management. At that

time it was a model or quality

assurance and mainly intend-

ed to be used by companies to

evaluate their suppliers.

ISO 9001 “ conquered the

world ”, quickly becoming the

most widely implemented ba-

sis or independent third-party

certication o quality man-

agement systems in all types

o organizations. It took until

1996 beore the second man-

agement system standard ap-

peared, namely ISO 14001 or

environmental managementsystems.

During the development o

this standard, there were al-

ready intensive contacts be-

tween ISO technical commit-

tee ISO/TC 176, responsibleor quality management and

ISO/TC 207, responsible or

the ISO 14000 amily or envi-

ronmental management.

From the outset, it was recog-

nized that many organizations

would implement both ISO

9001 and ISO 14001 and that

the standards should make it

possible to do so. The aim in

those days was “ compatibil-ity ”, dened according to ISO/

IEC Guide 2 as the suitability

o standards to be used togeth-

er without causing unaccept-

able interactions.

It was by that time not so

much harmony and synergy

that were at stake, but rather

to maintain the unique char-

acteristics o the separate sys-

tems without making integra-tion impossible. Although the

cooperation between the ISO

technical committees was not

yet optimal, in practice, many

organizations experimented

with the integration o envi-

ronmental and quality man-

agement systems and usually

with success. It was thereore

logical that usersofMSS ex-

pressed a need to better coor-

dinate the development and

contents o management sys-

tem standards.

Conflicting models ?

The rst edition o ISO 14001

used a model to visualize the

interrelationship between the

elements o the environmen-

tal management system. This

model was build upon a mod-el o the well known quality

guru, Deming : the Plan-Do-

Check-Act cycle.

Common main system element defned in

ISO Guide 72:2002 • Policy

• Planning

• Implementation and

operation

•

Performance assessment• Improvement

• Management review.

Figure 1 – The PDCA model o ISO 14001.

Environmental policy

Management review

Planning

Checking

Implementationand operation

Continual improvement

PLAN

DOCHECK

ACT

© ISO Management Systems, www.iso.org/ims


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Many organizationsexperimented

with integration

ISO INSIDER

THE AUTHOR

Dick Hortensius is head o the

department on management

systems with the Netherlands

Standardization Institute, NEN.

He is Secretary o the ISO

Technical Management Board’s

Joint Technical Coordination

Group (JTCG) on ISO manage-

ment system standards

E-mail [email protected]

Web www.nen.nl

Proposed high level structure 1. Context of the organization

1.1. Understanding of the organization and its context (within the

framework of the management system)

1.2. Needs & requirements of interested parties

1.3. Scope of the management system

2. Leadership & planning

2.1. General MS requirements

2.2. Policy

2.3. Management responsibility and commitment

2.4. Objectives and plans to achieve them

2.5. Roles and responsibilities

3. Support

3.1. Resource provision

3.2. Competence and training

3.3. Awareness

3.4. Communication, documentation/information and data

4. Operations

4.1. Operational control and planning4.2. Control of nonconformity

5. Performance evaluation

5.1. Monitoring & measurement

5.2. Auditing

5.3. Analysis and evaluation

5.4. Management review

6. Improvement

6.1. Corrective action

6.2. Preventive action

6.3. Continual improvement.

The clauses o ISO 14001

were structured according tothat cycle and the model also

clearly shows the ultimate ob-

jective o continual improve-

ment (see Figure 1, page 21).

At that time, ISO 9001 was

not based on such a model

and the second edition in 1994

was still structured according

to the “ 20 elements” without

a clear underlying concept.

erent models o ISO 9001 and

ISO 14001 seemed to increase

the dierences between the

standards, despite the act

that there was already a good

match between the two in

most o the system elements.

There was thus a challenge or

ISO to help MSS users and to

ensure that ISO 9001, ISO

14001 and other standards or

management systems, would

converge in their structure,

concepts and contents instead

o diverge.

ISO Guide 72

On the initiative o the Neth-

erlands Standardization In-

stitute (NEN), ISO Guide 72

was developed and published

in 2002. This ISO guideline wasintended to be applied by all

ISO committees developing

management system standards.

ISO Guide 72 provides guid-

ance to substantiate proposals

or new management system

standards (the so-called justi-

cation study) and or the stand-

ard development process.

The reason behind this speci-

ic guidance in addition to the

general ISO/IEC1) Directives

is that MSS usually have a ma-

jor impact on organizations.

Thereore, or any proposals

or new MSS, the market need

should be careully consid-

ered. And because o the large

number o interested parties

However, the model or qual-

ity management was already

under development and pre-

sented in the third edition

o ISO 9001 published in

2000 as the so-called “ proc-

ess model ”. It is a combina-

tion o PDCA and process

management and clearly

demonstrates that the ocus

o quality management is on

meeting customer require-

ments and enhancing custom-

er satisaction (see Figure 2).

Application o models in

standards has advantages and

disadvantages. On one hand,they show at a glance how

the standard is structured and

what the main characteristics

and objectives o the manage-

ment system are. On the other

hand, many users o the stand-

ard use the model as the basis

or implementing the system

in their own organization.

However, doing so makes the

integrated use o standardsbased on dierent models

more dicult. Although that

was not the intention, the di-

1) International Electrotechnical

Commission.



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The rst group, the Strategic

Advisory Group (SAG) onMSS, has been given the task

o strategic advice on the de-

velopment o ISO standards

or management systems in

the uture. What challenges

and trends will companies

and organizations ace in

the next 10 years and what

should management systems

standards look like to support

companies or sustainable

business success ?

task group has recently is-

sued proposals or an identi-cal main structure o MSS and

identical sub-clause headings.

Task Group 2 ocuses on au-

diting and has organized the

systematic review o ISO

19011, Guidelines or quality

and/or environmental man-

agement systems auditing. As a

result, working group WG 16

o ISO/TC 176 subcommittee

SC 3, Supporting technologies,is preparing a new edition o

ISO 19011 with a new scope,

broadening its application to

auditing o all types o man-

agement systems.

Finally, Task Group 3 is ocus-

ing on urther harmonization

o terminology in the area

o management systems. This

task group has recently issued

proposals or a number o common terms and core de-

nitions that apply to all types

o management systems.

New policies andproposals

Last year, the JTCG already

agreed a new policy or MSS

that has been endorsed by all

relevant ISO technical com-

mittees. This policy has as

main objective not only com-

patibility, but also alignment

o MSS. This objective would

be achieved through the pro-

motion o identical :

• Clause titles

• Sequence o clause titles

• Text

• Denitions.

These would be permitted to

diverge only where necessi-

tated by specic dierences

in managing their individual

elds o application.Proposals or identical (sub)

clause titles and sequence

were sent at the end o April

2009 by the JTCG to all ISO

technical committees involved

in MSS. These proposals in-

cluded the so-called “ high

level structure ” ( see box) or

all ISO MSS, as well as pro-

posals or identical subclause

titles (i.e. common system ele-ments) within that structure.

Once accepted, the aim is

to develop common text for

these common elements, a

process that was envisaged to

start in September 2009.

tion, audit, document, process,

procedure, etc.For most terms, a common

core denition does not seem

to be a big problem. But a

new denition or the con-

cept o “ continual improve-

ment” is likely to provoke

discussion. According to ISO

9000, continual improvement

is related to the increased

ability to meet requirements.

However, according to ISO14001, the nal aim o contin-

ual improvement is to achieve

improvement in overall envi-

ronmental perormance. The

proposal o Task Group 3 is

a compromise: increasing the

ability to meet objectives.

Objectives normally include

requirements and will nor-

mally ocus on achieving per-

ormance objectives, but we

have to wait and see whether

this proposed core denition

is acceptable to the diversity

o committees and dierent

technical and policy areas in-

volved.

New accents

The proposals o JTCG are

not a radical break with the

past. However, new accentscan be recognized and per-

haps some others issues still

need more emphasis.

Parts o the ISO 14001 PDCA

model and the ISO 9001 proc-

ess model can be identied

in the proposal. In addition,

the correspondence with the

structure o ISO Guide 72 is

airly large. That is ortunate

because those standards andthe models they are based up-

on have already proven their

value in the market-place.

ISO INSIDER

Currently, this group is pre-

paring its nal report or ISO/

TMB. One o the recommen-

dations will likely be to en-

sure that all uture MSS have

an identical set o generic

corerequirements.Forexam-

ple, as in the “ fower model ”

previously proposed by the

Netherlands (see Figure 3).

The second group, the Joint

Technical Coordination Group

(JTCG), has been given the

task o ensuring better com-

patibility and alignment be-

tween the management system

standards in the short term.

One o the concrete tasks is to

assess and review the clause in

ISO Guide 72 that deals with

the common system elements

and the preerred structure o

management system stand-

ards.

Within the JTCG, three taskgroups have been established.

Task Group 1 ocuses on the

management standards. This

There was a challengeor ISO to help

MSS standards users

What challenges willorganizations ace in the

next 10 years ?

The intention was that all

relevant ISO technical com-

mittees could comment until

the end o July and that in in

September, the JTCG would

develop a urther elaboration

o the model on the basis o

the results o the consultation

round.

Parallel to these proposals,

Task Group 3 o the JTCG de-

veloped a number o common

terms and core denitions

or management systems and

these have also been circulat-

ed or review and comments

to the relevant ISO technical

committees.

These proposals concern core

denitions or 23 terms suchas management, organization,

top management, monitoring,

preventive and corrective ac-



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TaskGroup 1 has examined

whether the requirements o the current versions o ISO

9001 and ISO 14001 can be

ully plotted in the proposed

new structure. That was in-

deed the case, although there

was some discussion about

which requirements could

be best placed under which

heading.

ISO INSIDER

Figure 3 – “Flower model” or the uture architecture o management system standards.

It is already well known that

the impact o a managementsystem highly depends on the

commitment o top manage-

ment. Thereore it is impor-

tant that the uture standards

emphasize this.

The review by the ISO tech-

nical committees will show

whether there are elements

that need to be expressed

more explicitly in this struc-

ture. For example, thecom-pliance with legal require-

ments, which is now part o

the identication o needs

and requirements o interest-

ed parties. Another is risk as-

sessment, which is now some-

where between identication

ofthecontextoftheorgani-zation (including needs and

requirements o stakehold-

ers) and the establishment o

policies and objectives and

the arrangements to achieve

these.

Next steps

As mentioned earlier, all ISO

technical committees could

submit comments until theend o July 2009. It was impor-

tant that they consider these

proposals careully, because itseems that ISO/TMB is very

determined the enorce the

alignment o management

system standards.

The JTCG and its task groups

were to meet again in Sep-

tember 2009 to review the

comments and prepare a nal

proposal or consideration by

ISO/TMB in the beginning o

2010. In the meantime, a startwill also be made on drating

common text for accepted

common subclauses. •

Proposals concerncore defnitions or

23 terms

The introduction o the “ con-

text of the organization”

highlights the importance

of external and internal ori-

entation or successully es-

tablishing and maintaining

a management system andor its actual perormance in

achieving benets or the or-

ganization.

In what kind o “ environment ”

(in terms o business, legal

and social rameworks and

the stakeholders involved)

does the organization operate

and what requirements are

expectedtobecompliedwith

related to the quality o prod-ucts and services and on the

conditions under which these

are produced ? How is the or-

ganization structured, what

are its mission, vision, shared

values and culture ?

All these issues infuence what

an eective management sys-

tem will look like. The “ lead-

ership and planning ” section

emphasizes the importance o visible leadership and (top)

management or eective

management (systems).

OH&S

Safety Others

Environment

Quality

Core with

identical

requirements for

all management

systems


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