ISO 9004 is the forthcoming standard for managing the sustained success of an organisation. It is to be used as a tool to extend the benefits of ISO 9001:2015, by ensuring organisations can consistently meet the relevant needs and expectations of their interested parties, in a balanced way, over the long term. Relevant interested parties include but are not limited to employees, suppliers, partners and society in general.
ISO 9004 is recommended as a guide for organisations whose top management wishes to extend the benefits of ISO 9001 in pursuit of systematic and continual improvement of the organisation’s overall performance.
Having been first published in 1994, updated in 2000 and last revised in 2009, ISO 9004 was not revised concurrently with ISO 9001:2015. A project to revise ISO 9004 was approved in December 2015 and a working draft is currently being developed by Technical Committee 176 Sub-Committee 2 (TC176/SC2). TC176/SC2 have proposed a change to the title and scope as well as proposing that an evaluation tool is included for evaluating the implementation of ISO 9004 recommendations. This will be a three year development programme with a potential release in 2018.
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