1. Use the benefits of ISO 9001 for design and development

An entire chapter of this quality management standard is devoted to the design and development (C&D) of products and services supplied to customers. By extension, these good practices can be applied to any design project even if it is not intended for an external customer, such as the design of new internal processes.

The grouping of quality provisions relating to C&D in a specific chapter of ISO 9001 is a legacy of the standard's past, when two standards existed - ISO 9001 and ISO 9002 - with the only difference being that C&D activities were included in the former and not in the latter. When the standards were merged into the 2000 version of ISO 9001, the decision was made to maintain all C&D requirements in a single chapter, to facilitate application of the standard to all companies and organizations which do not design products or services, and...