ISO has updated its guidance on how to create a quality plan, providing a powerful tool to complement a quality management system.
ISO 10005:2018, Quality management – Guidelines for quality plans, provides guidelines for establishing and applying quality plans. The guide has just been updated to provide more guidance and examples to be relevant to organizations of all shapes and sizes.
A quality plan identifies the actions, responsibilities, and associated resources needed to achieve the desired outcome. The plan also describes how an organization will produce the product or service and how these actions can have an impact on other processes or parts of the business.
While it is not essential to have ISO 9001 in place to benefit from the guidance of ISO 10005, the two standards are based on many of the same concepts and principles—making them complementary to one another.
Convener of the working group that updated the standard, Roy Ackema, said, ISO 10005 was updated to reflect modern business practices.
"This includes improvements to the terminology and concepts as described in the 2015 version of ISO 9001, such as those related to addressing the needs and expectations of relevant parties and managing organizational knowledge," Ackema said.
ISO 10005 was developed by working group 26 of ISO technical committee ISO/TC 176/SC 2, Quality systems, the secretariat of which is jointly held by BSI and SAC.