Management system guidance
6.0 Planning
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6.2 Quality objectives and planning to achieve them
6.2.1 Establishing quality objectives
Your organization must establish quality objectives at the functions, levels and processes it considers relevant within the quality management system. It is for your organization to decide which functions, levels and processes are relevant. ISO 9001:2026 requires the quality objectives to:
- Be consistent with the quality policy;
- Be measurable;
- Take applicable requirements into account;
- Be monitored;
- Be communicated;
- Be updated as appropriate;
- Be available as documented information;
- Be relevant to the conformity of products and services and to enhancing customer satisfaction.
What changed in ISO 9001:2026: these requirements are unchanged in substance. They have been re-lettered a)–h) (the item on conformity and customer satisfaction, formerly d), is now h)), and the old requirement to “maintain documented information” is now expressed as objectives being available as documented information.
The objectives and targets establish an important link between the quality policy and the plans used to achieve them. The objectives must be consistent with the quality policy, including its commitments to meet applicable requirements and to continual improvement.
Depending on the size, management structure, and other factors pertaining to your organization, the objectives may be established and reviewed by various personnel and with direct top management input.
Indicators are a practical way to monitor the achievement of objectives. An indicator is a measurable representation of the status of operations, management or conditions, and each objective will normally need one or more associated indicators.
Objectives can apply to an entire organization, can be site-specific, or can be specific to individual activities. They can be set at strategic, tactical and operational levels. The appropriate level(s) of management personnel should define the objectives and targets.
In some cases, personnel who set objectives may not be the same as those who set targets. Remember that the objectives are the overall goals as reflected in the principles established in the policy.
The scope and number of the objectives and targets must be realistic and achievable. Otherwise, the success and continued commitment from top management and employees will diminish. Consider the factors below, as you begin to formulate your objectives:
- Applicable statutory, regulatory and customer requirements;
- Risks and opportunities determined under Clause 6.1;
- External and internal issues affecting your organization (Clause 4.1);
- Financial, operational, and business requirements;
- Views of interested parties.
Targets must be quantified where practicable and the units that are used to quantify the targets are referred to as key performance indicators (KPIs). A KPI is defined as an expression that is used to provide information about management system performance. The following are some examples of KPIs:
- The percentage of orders delivered on time and in full;
- The number of customer complaints per 1,000 orders;
- Right-first-time or first-pass yield;
- Customer satisfaction scores;
- Scrap, rework or service-failure rates;
- External provider on-time delivery and quality performance.
Carefully consider the type of KPI you choose to use. Suppose your organization establishes a target to reduce rejected products by 40 % and the KPI you choose is the total number of rejects produced each year.
If your organization triples its production of units and reduces the number of rejects by 50 % per product unit, the KPI, rejects per year, does not show the reduction.
In this case, the better KPI would have been the reject rate per unit produced (e.g. rejects per 1,000 units). In many cases, measuring against the production units proves to be more accurate. The following is an example of an objective with a specific target and a performance indicator:
- Objective: reduce the number of products returned by customers;
- Target: achieve a 15 % reduction in customer returns within 12 months;
- Indicator: returns per 1,000 units shipped.
ISO 9001 does not require a formal “programme”, but Clause 6.2.2 requires your organization to plan how each objective will be achieved. Many organizations do this through an objectives or improvement programme, which is a key element to the success of the management system.
Properly designed and implemented, management programmes should achieve the objectives and, consequently, improve your organization’s performance. The management programme should:
- Address each objective and target;
- Designate the personnel responsible for achieving targets at each relevant function/level of the organization;
- Provide an action plan describing how each target will be achieved;
- Establish a time-frame or a schedule for achieving each target.
More information on PDCA
Planning
Context
Planning
Support
Doing
Support
Operations
Checking
Monitoring, measurement, analysis and evaluation
Acting
Improvement
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