My perspective is that ISO 9001 is first and foremost a product being marketed and sold. Like most products, the aim is to increase revenue, by 1) reaching into new markets, 2) expanding adoption in existing markets, and 3) selling more add-on products and services.
My expectation is that in the efforts to achieve #1 and #2 ISO 9001 will continue down the path toward vagueness, thought-crime clauses, etc. in the name of 'broadening' its applicability and markets. As this direction garners more and more confusion, criticism and backlash, there may be some attempts to mitigate that negativity to avoid loss of sales.
One direction that mitigation could take would be to rewrite the standard with greater clarity of
style,
auditability, and
meaning:
- Currently, it is a confused mix of prose and bullet items. E.g., 9001:2015 7.1.5.2 has requirements a,b,c but then has a statement "The organization shall determine if the validity of previous measurement results..." which should be another bullet labeled 'd' but that wouldn't fit in the way they have it structured linguistically, so it hangs off the end of the section like an "oh yea, by the way, do this too!". "One bullet / one requirement!" should be the meme.
- Thought-crime requirements, like RBT, should be removed/elevated to a status of 'guiding principles' behind (above?) the standard, but not be part of the requirements per se.
- The inclusion of an authoritative (i.e., not a "guidance" doc which includes a disclaimer that they don't stand by it) companion document which answers "Why this requirement X is in the standard" for every X in the standard. If the requirements have a justification for their inclusion, then let there be light and the justifications be shone upon! As it currently stands, an alien visitor to Earth reading the internet quality discussions might think that ISO 9001 harkens from some mystical ancient civilization whose true intent and meaning were lost in the mists of time, and we discuss and ponder over the "intent" as if these were cryptic aphorisms found on stone tablets. (This companion doc would go a long way toward disambiguating the confusion over the "intent" of each requirement, which in my view constitutes 87.654321% of all internet and auditor discussions about a requirement.)
On the other hand, what I would actually expect is a doubling-down of the current trend. I could even see the incorporation of what I would call 'defensive clauses'; e.g., furthering the encroachment of the standard into the management and
philosophy of the organization as a way to tamp down the wrong-think of criticizing the standard. That is, the response to criticism and backlash would be to incorporate types-of-thinking requirements that essentially make such criticisms into nonconformances. To better serve the customer, make it a requirement that the customer become more suited to the product.
This may sound terribly pessimistic, but when viewed as a marketed product, I do not see much in the way of competition that carries the reputation (however deserved or not that reputation might be) of ISO 9001 or its sister products. There is thus little incentive to reinvent 9001 in response to some competitor products; instead, this organism called ISO 9001 will likely mutate largely unchecked so as to further exploit its current ecological niches (markets) and ooze into yet other niches, as long as it has a steady energy supply of reputation and auditing activity to feed from.
I do think 9001 has value and can improve an organization. However, it creates undue overhead and confusion due to unnecessary vagueness, style, dubious auditability, and refusal to categorically state the intent of each and every clause. Only when these characteristic flaws begin to notably impact their revenues will this trend be corrected.
