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By Chad Kymal and Dave Watkins

Publisher's Note: This article has been reprinted with permission from THE INFORMED OUTLOOK Newsletter, May 2001 issue.

Many organizations registered to ISO 9001/2/3:1994 have begun planning for the tran-sition of their quality management systems (QMSs) to ISO 9001:2000, Quality management systems-Requirements.While this major shift in standards usage is taking place slowly but steadily in many industries, suppliers to the automotive sector have by and large not begun planning for the transition.

The reason is that automotive suppliers are confused about what is happening with the third edition of Quality System Requirements QS-9000 and ISO Technical Specification (TS) 16949:1999, Quality systems-Automotive suppliers-Particular requirements for the application of ISO 9001:1994, in response to the changes to their base document, ISO 9001.

In large part, this confusion is the result of concerns about the implications of this change and its potential impact on them. Automotive suppliers are left to wonder, "Is QS-9000 going away?

As it stands, organizations registered to ISO 9001/2/3:1994 and/or any set of sector-specific requirements based on ISO 9001:1994, have three years to make the transition to ISO 9001:2000. Mean-while, the International Automotive Task Force (IATF) has announced that there will be no revisions to EAQF, VDA 6.1, AVSQ or QS-9000-the French, Ger-man,
Italian and US automotive catalogs to which registration has been required of suppliers. At the same time, TS 16949:1999, which is considered equiva-lent to the four catalogs, is on track to be revised in early 2002.

QS-9000 Will Not Be Revised; ISO/TS 16949:2002 Deadlines Ahead?

The fact remains that the only OEM to have clearly stated its future intentions is Italy's Fiat, which reportedly informed its suppliers in July 2000 that they should pursue registration to ISO/TS 16949:2002 in place of AVSQ (see "IATF Provides Limited Transition Insight", THE OUT-LOOK, February 2001). The broadest

hint that all the OEMs may follow suit is the indication that they will not revise the four national catalogs but are close to completing a draft of TS 16949:2002. This draft will contain the verbatim text of ISO 9001:2000 and have the same transition period as ISO 9001.

The seemingly obvious implication is that QS-9000 will become less and less relevant as organizations adopt the process approach model of ISO 9001:2000 and migrate away from the 20-clause/element structure of QS-9000/ ISO 9001:1994. As a result, QS-9000 will probably succumb to a natural death during this three-year period. The changes in ISO 9001:2000 will be captured in ISO/TS 16949:2002 which, for all practical purposes, will become the fourth edition of QS-9000.

Because ISO/TS 16949:2002 is an ISO document developed with ISO Technical Committee (TC) 176, the version based on ISO 9001:2000 will require TC 176 approval. Therefore, even though the draft of TS 16949:2002 is expected to be completed by June 2001, it will probably not be released until the beginning of 2002, so as to permit the participating member bodies of TC 176 to review and ballot the TS. While a "draft TS" might be released "for information only" in the next few months, the final document will be released in less than a year. By the third or fourth quarter of 2001, most of the Big Three are expected to announce deadlines for their supply bases to make the transition to TS 16949.

In effect, QS-9000-registered com-panies should become familiar with ISO 9001:2000 and ISO/TS 16949:2002 very soon.