Revision of the ISO/TS 16949 Standard

02 November 2015

In December 2014, the International Automotive Task Force (IATF) decided to revise ISO/TS 16949:2009, aligning it to the high level structure of ISO 9001:2015 (Annex SL) and also to take the opportunity to incorporate lessons realised from recent years.

Planning and analysis for this task has been completed. An initial committee working draft has been created, which includes input from the stakeholder Survey and common OEM customer specific requirements, incorporating the ISO 9001:2015 structure and content as boxed text.

IATF members have a clear aspiration to deliver:

A consistent, clear communication to demonstrate alignment amongst all IATF members, creating and maintaining a positive industry outlook regarding the future of Automotive QMS.
Increased ownership of the standard, the certification scheme and process, by the entire industry.
Integrated performance improvement and supplier development concepts into both the Automotive QMS certification scheme and process.
The enabling of "performance based" audit concepts are to be implemented and the identification of best practices that can be transferred/cascaded to other sites.

In anticipation of the issue of ISO 9001:2015, the IATF made a positive move by seeking stakeholder inputs on potential enhancements to the ISO/TS 16949 standard via a survey process which received many responses (there were 1,759 individual responses). This survey was a very important and unique opportunity to gather suggestions for improvement and to promote participation in this process from all interested parties.

This positive approach by the IATF was so that stakeholders’ inputs regarding opportunities for improvement could be utilised into updates to ISO/TS 16949 requirements, the associated certification/audit process and Rules for Achieving and Maintaining IATF Recognition, 4th Edition. Commonalities in customer requirements are also being analysed for potential inclusion in the future standard.

The IATF will be releasing a transition strategy from ISO/TS 16949:2009 to a new version of the ISO/TS 16949 standard at a later date. Completion of the revised quality management system standard is targeted for Q4 2016.

Watch this space or check out the IATF Global Website (www.iatfglobaloversight.org) for future information on updates!