ISO9004:2009 released - business sustainability based on quality!

The International Standards Organisation (ISO) has announced the release of ISO9004:2009 - Managing for the sustained success of an organization – A quality management approach.

This third version of the standard emphatically places Quality Management and ISO9001 as the foundation for the delivery of sustained business success, which is completely consistent with the way HPO have been interpreting ISO9001:2000 since its release. We therefore welcome this very clear positioning that ISO9004 promotes.

A key element of the updated standard is its emphasis on the maturity of the management system beyond the delivery of individual standards and frameworks, and by doing so better delivering an organisation's business sustainability. It also stresses self assessment as a key tool to help organisations understand their current level of maturity as part of their business planning cycle.

This accords completely with the assessment tools that HPO has been developing in recent years, which are already capable of helping organisations carry out this self assessment in a mature and robust way.

News of the release of the new edition of ISO9004 can be found at this link