The final countdown

The effect of changes in ISO certification in 2003 on both UK market and the certification organizations are presented. The 2000 version of ISO 9000 has been in use for two years and the organizations are preparing themselves for December 2003 changeover deadline. It is expected that 85% of the organizations have planned to complete the transition by mid 2003. The challenge for the certification industry is how to deal with clients in December 2003 who do not meet the requirements of ISO 9001:2000, but who have improvement programmes and whose systems are much improved from 1994 version of the standard. Also the certification bodies should evaluate their strategies to give greater weight to the needs of the customer.