Management System for Automotive Production and Service Parts

ISO/TS 16949 Standard specifies the quality system requirements for the design/ development, production, installation and servicing of automotive-related products.

ISO/TS 16949 Standard is an ISO Technical Specification which aligns to and supersedes existing US, German, French and Italian automotive quality system standards within the world automotive industry. It specifies the quality system requirements for the design/ development, production, installation and servicing of automotive-related products.

The world automotive industry requires first-class product quality, productivity, competitiveness as well as continual improvement. To achieve this target many vehicle manufacturers insist that suppliers implement strict technical specifications as laid out in a Quality Management standard for suppliers to the automotive sector, known as ISO /TS 16949.

ISO/TS 16949 has been developed by the industry, the International Automotive Task Force (IATF), to encourage improvement in both the supply chain and the certification process. In fact, for the majority of leading vehicle manufacturers, certification to this specification is a mandatory requirement for doing business.

First published in March 1999, then revised in 2002 and lastly revised in 2009. There are now over 35,000 certificates issued in 80 countries.

ISO/TS 16949 is relevant to all types of automotive supply companies, from small manufacturers to multi-site multinational organisations located anywhere in the world. However, it is only applicable to sites where production or service parts are manufactured.

• The specification is based on ISO 9001 and encourages a process approach. Understanding the inter-relationship of processes through the use of the standard can enable improved product and process quality and ultimately avoids variation in the supply chain thus reducing waste and preventing defects.
• ISO/TS 16949 is based on ISO 9001, making the process approach easy to adopt and integrate with other key management systems including ISO 14001 Environmental and OHSAS 18001 Occupational Health and Safety. It also complements many existing business improvement tools such as FMEA, PPAP and Six Sigma making flexible and easy to adopt.
• For suppliers to a number of different vehicle manufacturers certification to TS 16949 avoids the need for multiple certificates to VDA6.1 (German), EAQF (French), QS-9000 (US) and AVSQ (Italian) thereby eliminating duplication in preparation, documentation as well as second and third party audits.