Management system guidance
Improvement
ISO Navigator Pro™ is a free tool that provides practical, expert guidance for businesses wishing to interpret and better implement the requirements of ISO 9001:2026, ISO 14001:2026 and ISO 45001:2018.
Our range of ISO templates cover the requirements of ISO 9001:2026, ISO 14001:2026 and ISO 45001:2018, and offer an easy way to implement your next management system.
Key benefits of improvement
Successful organizations have an ongoing focus on improvement. Improvement may arise from changes in performance, or reacting to changes in internal and external conditions that create new opportunities for improvement. Typical benefits of applying the improvement principle include:
- Improved performance, capability and customer satisfaction;
- Focus on root-cause investigation and corrective action;
- Enhanced ability to anticipate and react to internal and external risks and opportunities;
- Enhanced consideration of both incremental and breakthrough improvement;
- Improved use of learning for improvement;
- Enhanced drive for innovation.
The following actions will help promote the concept of improvement:
- Establishing improvement objectives throughout the organization;
- Training workers throughout the organization on how to apply basic tools and methodologies to achieve improvement objectives;
- Ensuring workers are competent to successfully promote and complete improvement projects;
- Developing processes to implement improvement projects;
- Tracking, reviewing and auditing the planning, implementation, completion and results of improvement projects;
- Integrating improvement considerations into the development of new/modified products, services and processes;
- Recognizing and acknowledging improvement.
Improvement in ISO 9000:2026 and ISO 9001:2026
ISO 9000:2026 treats continual improvement as a fundamental concept and adds innovation and change management to its additional concepts. Improvement is therefore not only about fixing problems; it also covers planned change, new ideas and breakthrough developments.
ISO 9001:2026 restructures its improvement requirements to match. The clauses most closely linked to this principle are:
- Clause 10.1 Continual improvement - the old clauses 10.1 and 10.3 are merged. Use the results of monitoring, measurement, analysis and evaluation, and of management review, to determine opportunities, then address them as part of continual improvement. Improvement can be incremental or breakthrough, and can involve innovation or reorganization;
- Clause 10.2 - correcting nonconformities and removing their causes so they do not recur;
- Clause 6.1.3 - a new clause for determining, analysing and evaluating opportunities and planning actions to pursue them;
- Clause 6.3 - planning changes to the QMS, now also covering communication of changes, how effectiveness will be monitored and evaluated, and how results will be reviewed;
- Clause 5.3 and Clause 9.3 - reporting opportunities for improvement to top management, and reviewing them as a management review input.
More information on quality management principles
| Customer focus | Meeting customer requirements, exceeding expectations and customer experience |
| Process approach | Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA), sequence and interaction, inputs, activities and outputs |
| Leadership | Establishing strategic direction, purpose and a quality culture |
| Engagement of people | Competence, knowledge, empowerment and quality culture |
| Evidence‐based decision making | Data analysis, process performance assessment, and risk-based thinking |
| Relationship management | Maintaining relationships with interested parties and providers in the supply chain |
More information on PDCA
Planning
Context
Planning
Support
Doing
Support
Operations
Checking
Monitoring, measurement, analysis and evaluation
Acting
Improvement
How to apply the latest quality management principles
The latest and current quality management principles (QMPs), stated in ISO 9000:2026, are intended to provide the foundation by which any organization can continually improve its performance.
You can learn to apply the latest quality management principles in the context of your business's own particular operations by reviewing and documenting its activities in the context of each quality management principle.
Want to know more?
- Read our customer's feedback
- Client list - who's using our templates?
- How the templates are formatted and download examples
- Why we use turtle diagrams and process maps
- What's the difference between a process and a procedure?
- About documented information
SSL certification
A certificate guarantees the information your internet browser is receiving now originates from the expected domain - https://www.iso9001help.co.uk. It guarantees that when you make a purchase, sensitive data is encrypted and sent to the right place, and not to a malicious third-party.
Free PDCA guidance
ISO Navigator™ is our FREE online training tool that shows you how to apply the principles of PDCA to your operations. We also offer many helpful templates that get you on the road to documenting your management system, please visit the download page.