ISO 9001:2015 - Scope of Registration

[Sidney Vianna]

The ISO 9001 Auditing Practices Group just released a refreshed/revised document on the issue of Scope and Applicability. Hyperlinked image below.

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[Perspicuity]

Sidney, thank you for sharing!

It appears that the APG has taken note of issues and tried to address them by providing ten pages of explanation rather than the previous three pages. The have also elevated the document from “General” categorization and placed it directly into “Auditing”.

As you surely know, the ISO 9001 Auditing Practices Group has for years provided QMS auditing topics for ISO 9001:2015 (on their web page). Three sections breakout the different documents as follows:

1. General
2. Auditing General
3. Auditing to ISO 9001:2015

A comparison of old and new relative to how this particular document was maintained:

OLD
Document: APG - Scope 2015 (2016-01-13)
Web Page Section: 1. General
Noteworthy Content: “…the scope of certification encompasses the scope of the QMS which the organization decides to be certified.”

NEW
Document: APG - Scope and Applicability (2020-02-26)
Web Page Section: 3. Auditing to ISO 9001:2015
Noteworthy Content: “The scope of certification is derived from the scope of the QMS and is dependent on what the organization decides to have certified.”

Key words here are “encompasses” and “derived” which change this, I believe, definitively for the better.

Thank you again!

 

[Tyler]

Based on the information that Sidney provided, would it be fair to say that there are two types of scopes that can be used to describe a QMS?

• Scope with respect to the business' processes, functions, & resources.
• Scope with respect to ISO9001.

I have always been a little bit confused about what the standard means when it uses the term "scope". Based on this thread, it seems that the term "scope" as used in section 4.3 refers exclusively to the QMS' scope of certification; however, I have often times confused it in the past with the reach of the QMS across the business. For example, a business might have a QMS that covers functions such as design, production, shipping, etc., but not accounting, marketing, or HR.

 

[Sidney Vianna]

Based on this thread, it seems that the term "scope" as used in section 4.3 refers exclusively to the QMS' scope of certification;

That is not correct. 4.3 refers to the SCOPE of the QMS; scope of certification is something different, explained in the paper from the ISO APG.

 

[Perspicuity]

Tyler,

The latest document revision is available here:

https://committee.iso.org/files/liv.../APG-Scope_and_Applicability_Ver2_2020-02.pdf

 

[John Broomfield]

Remember the message implicit with two scope statements, as in:

A. This is our management system for fulfilling our mission.

B. These are the parts of our management certified as conforming to <chosen system standard>.

A is always bigger in scope than B and it tells employees the system isn’t just about certification.