In 2014, the International Automotive Task Force (IATF) reported that the automotive industry wouldn’t upgrade the ISO/TS 16949 standard to ISO 9001:2015, much to the dismay of Tier One suppliers. In a survey that same year, Tier One suppliers related their desire to update their management systems to ISO 9001. Additionally, they weren’t happy with the industry’s onerous customer-specific requirements.

It’s interesting to note that many years ago, QS-9000, the predecessor to ISO/TS 16949, was written to reduce the proliferation of standards in the automotive industry. The number of new requirements coming from both the OEMs and Tier Ones in the last few years definitely looks like a return to the pre-QS-9000 days.

The IATF took two steps based on this feedback from Tier One suppliers. First, they would update ISO/TS 16949 to ISO 9001:2015, and that they were going to create a task force to do so. Second, they would try to understand customer needs before embarking on the change.

When evaluating a new draft standard against the current ISO/TS 16949, the following forces come into play (figure 1):

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