ISO’s popular standard for auditing management systems is under revision and has just reached the first voting stage, a crucial step in its development.
Organizations are increasingly turning to management systems, in a quest to be more effective and save time and money. Many companies have several different management systems, each focusing on different areas, such as IT, information security, quality and environmental management. ISO 19011, Guidelines for auditing management systems, will help with the effective audit of those management systems to ensure continuous improvement, allowing harmonization across systems and a uniform approach of the auditing process where there are multiple systems in place.
The standard is currently being revised to reflect the growing number of management system standards (MSS) and the recent revisions of some of the most widely used, such as ISO 9001 for quality and ISO 14001 for the environment. It has just reached Committee Draft (CD) stage, meaning those countries involved in its revision have an opportunity to make comments on the draft.
Denise Robitaille, Chair of ISO/PC 302, the ISO project committee responsible for the revision, said that when the standard was last published in 2011, there were 11 management system standards, but that number has since grown significantly to 39, with 12 others in development.
“As organizations see the benefit and need for management systems, there has been an increase in the number of sector-specific standards to respond to the mandate.
