What’s Really New in ISO 9001:2015? Knowledge Management

Helping an organization implement a strategic knowledge management program

Peter Drucker once said, "The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker."

The importance of knowledge management (KM) as an important element of business excellence or strategic quality programs is gaining recognition. Some years ago, Baldrige and the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) added criteria related to KM to their models.

Now, ISO 9001:2015 has a new clause, 7.1.6, on organizational knowledge and its management. This clause has no equivalent in ISO 9001:2008. In fact, it seems to be the only clause that is completely new. The other clauses seem to have some equivalent in the earlier version, in letter or in spirit. (For a comparison of the two ISO 9001 versions, click here.)

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Comments

Organizational Kowledge

Unfortunately, the clause in ISO 9001:2015 is Organizaitonal knowledge. Organizations don't have knowledge, people do. Organizations don't have memory either. Think about the hierarchy of data, information, knowledge wisdom. An organization has data and may have information, but knowledge and wisdom are specific to only people. The ISO 9000 series has always had a competency clause and it still does. The entire 7.1.6 Organizaitonal knowledge is such an unfortunate addition to a standard that is loosing its value. I am sure users of ISO 9001:2015 will not understand the difference between employee competence, documented information, and operational knowledge. How could they?