Format of QMS Documented information: Electronic or Printed?

Should the final draft of the Quality manual and procedures be printed?
What happens if we choose to keep the printed copies?

According to the requirements of ISO 9001:2015 (cl. 7.5.2.b) the Organization chooses the documented information format (electronic or printed(hard) copy).

Is it more difficult to manage a hard copy of the Manual, including making changes.

On the other hand, it is a common practice to have a hard copy of the Manual for familiarization and training purposes. In this case, such a copy is not supposed to be managed, and it will not be updated when changes are made.

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Quality Management Principles

ISO 9001:2015 - the most widely used ISO standard in the world - is based on a number of quality management principles including: strong customer focus, leadership, engagement of people, the process approach, continual improvement, evidence-based decision making, and relationship management.

ISO publication Quality Management Principles gives an overview of the ISO 9001:2015 QMP.



The seven quality management principles are :

• Customer focus
• Leadership
• Engagement of people
• Process approach
• Improvement
• Evidence-based decision making
• Relationship management

Publication contains the description of the principle, the explanation of the principle importance, the examples of benefits for the Organization, as well as the examples of typical actions that could be taken based on the principle to improve the Organization’s performance.

Access the full publication Quality Management Principles


A collection of ISO 9001:2015 Documents and Templates

ISO 9001:2015 Quality Manual temporary price reduction!

ISO 9001:2015 Quality System Procedures

Remote co-authoring of QMS documented information

In our modern world is not uncommon when two or more geographically distributed teams would want to work on the QMS documented information together.

Can the documents like Manuals and procedures be placed in the cloud where all responsible team members can contribute to it? 
How do others handle these kinds of situations?

It is a possible practice to co-author QMS documented information remotely. 

We offer a couple of simple tips to smooth the process:

• Assign a Team leader who has the most experience in the QMS development. 
• Make changes to the documented information having the ‘Track changes’ option ON. 
• Team leader is solely responsible for accepting the changes and finalizing the document. 

This is a good resource on remote collaboration and co-authoring of MS Office documents.

All QMS documents and templates we carry are suitable for remote co-authoring.

Note: When setting up the co-authoring environment pay close attention to the access configuration and information security of the solution.

ISO 9001:2015 Products	ISO 14001:2015 Products	ISO 50001:2011 Products
IMS Products