"Time is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future" Wikipedia 2017.

"Time is the one thing everybody feels, it just expires with no regard to years" Edwin Starr 1970.

Ok, so whichever philosophical viewpoint you come from, either the realist view of Newtonian time and the concept that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, or the more intellectual viewpoint of Leibniz and Kant that time is neither an event or thing, or maybe that it was just the title of a great song that heralded the transition of 60's soul into the disco sound of the 70's, one thing's for sure, time is running out on all of us.

So what does this mean in the world of quality management ?

Well quality management is not immune from the ravages of time, and the changes that passing time necessitates on our future existence. To bring this apparently meaningless ramble to a point, if you have your quality management system certified to either ISO9001:2008, AS9100C, or ISO13485:2012 you have a deadline by which to transition your management system certification or risk having your existing certification withdrawn.

For ISO9001:2008 and AS9100C you have until the 15th September 2018 - see our countdown clock on our homepage. For ISO13485:2012 you have slightly more breathing space, having until the end of February 2019.

BUT - if you haven't done anything yet you may have already left it too late, your certification body needs to plan these transition audits and there may be preliminary steps your CB will require you to go through (e.g. submission of gap analysis), then there may well be nonconformities raised, and then the CB has to go through its decision making process, all of which requires precious time. Also any significant change required due to changes in the standards which your company needs to adopt may well need to be implemented and operated in order to provide confidence to the CB auditor that the changes are indeed embedded in your system. So the time to start action for transition is NOW.

Aerospace audits might be slightly different as the IAQG has required that all aerospace audits post 15th June 2017 are conducted against the requirements of the revised aerospace standards (i.e. AS9100D), so your CB transition audit is coming whether you are prepared or not !

MGX can help however with all these transitions, depending on the size of your organisation and current preparedness our level of involvement can vary from full gap analysis, system update and implementation to simple overview/audit to confirm your plans are already suitable for transition - contact us today.

For those with EMS certification the deadlines are the same as that for ISO9001:2008, and those with OHSAS18001 certification should be aware of the imminent release of ISO45001, we can also help in these areas via our competent associates.

It is imperative that certified organisations act on these transitions now, as the deadlines are real and looming, withdrawal of the old standards will lead to expiry of certification, which can have a result on associated contracts which necessitate third party certification, and can lead to a loss of confidence with your customers.

Contact us now...