{"id":32681,"date":"2025-09-24T07:18:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T11:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/?p=32681"},"modified":"2025-09-24T07:18:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T11:18:22","slug":"the-iso-90012026-draft-has-zero-requirements-about-digitalization-and-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/the-iso-90012026-draft-has-zero-requirements-about-digitalization-and-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"The ISO 9001:2026 Draft Has ZERO Requirements About &#8220;Digitalization&#8221; and &#8220;AI&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s shocking that so many consultants and certification bodies are just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qualitymag.com\/articles\/98479-sustainability-and-technology-are-shaping-the-next-iso-9001-update\">outright lying<\/a> to the public by insisting the new ISO 9001 standard &#8212; which isn&#8217;t even out yet &#8212; includes things like &#8220;<em>AI<\/em>&#8221; and &#8220;<em>digitalization<\/em>.&#8221; They&#8217;re doing this to panic people into buying their services, tricking them into thinking the standard includes alien-sounding technological breakthroughs that the folks won&#8217;t be able to handle without hiring them. It&#8217;s patently false.<\/p>\n<p>Now, we know this since the Draft International Standard (DIS) version of the standard is literally available for sale, and you can read it yourself. But since ISO is charging like $85 for a stupid draft, no one is reading it, leaving the scammers to get away with this.<\/p>\n<p>Well, no. I&#8217;m bringing some receipts and holding them accountable. Let&#8217;s look at every reference to things like AI and &#8220;<em>digitalization<\/em>&#8221; in the DIS and see how it stacks up with the scammers&#8217; marketing.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>Requirements vs. Advice<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>First, understand that ISO 9001 exists primarily to provide <em><strong>requirements<\/strong> <\/em>for a QMS and not guidance. That&#8217;s in the title, by the way, since the standard is literally titled, &#8220;<em>Quality management systems: Requirements<\/em>.&#8221; That hasn&#8217;t stopped the latest crop of TC 176 authors from adding guidance all over the place, such as in the introductory section, the endless &#8220;notes,&#8221; and the new (massive) Annex A, called &#8220;<em>Clarification of structure, terminology and clause<\/em>s.&#8221; That last part, ISO insists, is not implementation advice, even though that is <em><strong>exactly what it is<\/strong><\/em>. Take, for example, this sentence, which provides some pretty darn <em><strong>specific<\/strong> <\/em>advice on how to implement clause 4:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As such it is critical to clearly determine the opportunities, determine the needs and objectives, determine the risk associated with the opportunity itself and formulate a strategy and plan to support the achievement of desired results.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But all those editorial additions and consulting flourishes are not requirements, and TC 1767 can say whatever they want in those sections, provided it doesn&#8217;t impact the text of clauses 4 through 10 themselves. That&#8217;s where we find requirements, and <em><strong>that<\/strong> <\/em>is what you&#8217;re audited against.<\/p>\n<p>So, within the <em><strong>requirements<\/strong><\/em>, where are all the references to <em>\u201cemerging technologies,\u201d \u201cartificial intelligence,\u201d \u201cQuality 4.0,\u201d \u201cautomation,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>\u201cdigital technologies.<\/em>\u201d Or even &#8220;<em>sustainability<\/em>,&#8221; like some have insisted?<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>Zero is a Round Number<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Well, this is easy. <em><strong>There are none.<\/strong> <\/em>As in zero. Not a single reference to <em><strong>any<\/strong> <\/em>of those things in the requirements at all. And when I say &#8220;<em>none<\/em>,&#8221; I mean &#8212; literally &#8212; not one. They are simply not there.<\/p>\n<p>We really have to jump back to the Annex A guidance to even see the terms pop up at all. There\u2019s a single brief mention of \u201c<em>emerging technologies<\/em>\u201d as it relates to document control, and then a brief discussion on \u201c<em>digitalization<\/em>\u201d under the guidance on continual improvement.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-32682\" style=\"border: 1px solid #000000;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/iso9001digitalization.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"526\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\">There is\u00a0<em><strong>no<\/strong><\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em>mention at all of AI anywhere in the standard, whether in the guidance materials, notes, or requirements.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em>Sustainability<\/em>&#8221; is mentioned three times in the guidance materials: once each in the sections on interested parties, QMS scope, and design and development. The term is never defined, so we can&#8217;t be sure which of the many definitions of &#8220;<em>sustainability<\/em>&#8221; ISO 9001 is talking about. Again, there are no requirements related to the concept at all.<\/p>\n<p>Again, I am not sure why consultants and CBs continue to lie when anyone who has eyeballs can see that what they are saying is patently, demonstrably, and egregiously <em><strong>false<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No requirements about sustainability, either.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[683,8764,211,14,8277],"class_list":["post-32681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-ai","tag-digitalization","tag-dis","tag-iso-9001","tag-iso-90012026","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32683,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32681\/revisions\/32683"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}