Beginning of the year is a period for planning, setting goals and objectives, but few quality professionals take actions to improve their QMS
The Quality Management System – QMS, based on the ISO 9001 Standard must be continuously improved, at least that is what is described in the Standard itself. In addition to mandatory tools to improve your QMS such as internal audit, critical analysis by management, third party audit, among others, it is up to the quality manager to insert other improvement tools.
We believe that ISO 9001: 2015 is one of the best Standards ever written, but as we always say, ISO Standards are minimum requirements on the subject in question, so ISO 9001 presents the minimum requirements for quality management systems. It is the responsibility of the quality manager to assess maturity and apply other actions to improve his QMS.
Here we present trends that in my opinion can improve your QMS and make ISO 9001 manage much more than a quality management system:
1 – Compliance with CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) and GDPR Europe (General Data Protection Regulation).
If you have never heard of CCPA and GDPR, you should immediately learn about this topic. CCPA and GDPR are already changing the process for several organizations in California (US) and Europe. It is a law creating rules for the control of sensitive data that companies handle, all organizations in some way interact with data, therefore, the adaptation must be immediate.
To improve your QMS, you can use it to make it one of the tools for law enforcement in your organization. This certainly needs to be mapped in the context of the organization, the risks of data leakage and lack of data control can be mapped within the QMS, and so you will improve your QMS with what you have already applied as a tool in your organization.
Would it be good to implement ISO 27001 and ISO 27701? Norms more linked to the theme, of course it would be, but if this is not the reality envisioned by your company and its top management, take action yourself, use the risk of CCPA and GDPR to improve your QMS.
2 – Compliance and anti-corruption controls
The standards that talk about this topic are ISO 37301 and ISO 37001, but the case here is to improve your QMS, so let’s go to practice. Get these Standards and see how they are easy to integrate with ISO 9001, and how you can use them to improve your QMS.
The standards are also based on Annex SL, so they have the same layout as ISO 9001 and so you can also use Organization Context, Risk, Change Management requirements, and new items from these Standards to improve your QMS.
Does your company have a code of ethics? Channel complaints? Procedure for gifts and donations, or even procedure for contact with public agent? Do you have a process for listing your legal obligations? These are just a few examples of how these Standards and themes can help you improve your QMS. We are not talking about certification, we are talking about using other ISO Standards to improve your QMS, and these are the main future trends.
3 – Innovation
Another standard that can improve your QMS is ISO 56002 – Innovation Management Systems. This is a Guideline Standard, so it has already been designed to be an innovation implementation guide.
You can use the standards guidelines, and some requirements to start an innovation process within your organization. Do you think this is possible? If you don’t succeed in the whole company, you can apply Innovation within your own area. I’m sure your top management will be interested in the topic.
In conclusion, you can use three major trends to improve your QMS, without investment and only using tools that your own QMS already has. Makes sense? May your QMS have a great year and that you take action to improve your QMS.
