More than a million organizations around the world embrace the ISO 9001 quality management system (QMS) standard to guide their businesses and operate in the most efficient manner possible. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has recently updated ISO 9001 from its 2008 version; the 2015 date assigned to the latest revision reflects the completion of work by the various technical committees that contribute to major updates of ISO standards.

The roll out of the new ISO 9001 standard began in 2016, and we now approach the critical time frame in which registered organizations need to complete recertification to the new standard or risk losing their ISO 9001 certification altogether. All certificates connected to the 2008 version of the standard will expire and become invalid in Sept. 2018. That may seem like a long way off, but when considering the time it takes to schedule, prepare, and conduct a third-party certification audit, the opposite is true. Time is on the verge of running out.

Loss of certification can have a significant negative effect on your company’s reputation and disrupt your business flow as customers and supply chain partners who require a valid ISO 9001 registration react to your loss of certification.

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