7 Part 7: V-Modell Reference Mapping to Standards

7.2 Mapping to other Standards

7.2.4 Mapping to ISO 9001:2000

The international standard »ISO 9001:2000 (in the following briefly called ISO 9001) determines requirements for the quality management system whose introduction is a strategic decision made by an organization. The transposition of ISO 9001 to an European Norm (EN) was performed by the CEN management center and supported by CEN/BT WG 107. In this process the text of the international standard was approved by CEN without any changes.

If a contract-awarder requires a quality management system according to ISO 9001, this may be demonstrated on the side of the supplier by submitting the appropriate valid certificate from an accredited certification body.

If a supplier or an organization wants to obtain a certificate according to ISO 9001, it has to run and maintain a quality management system. In this context it has to be noted that such a certificate may also be issued to individual parts of a company. If a contract requires a certificate as a precondition it therefore has to be made sure that all parts of the company of the supplier that participate in the project are certified.

To obtain a ISO 9001 certificate, among other things all processes in the certified area have to be regulated by documented procedures. The V-Modell is such a documented procedure for methodical system development that covers the entire system life cycle. In contrast to other documented procedures, the V-Modell represents a very comprehensive documented procedure that integrates many subprocesses. It meets the requirements of ISO 9001 for the technical product development process. In addition to the V-Modell, however, there will be also other processes in an organization - as for example production processes - that will have to be considered within the framework of ISO 9001. Thus the V-Modell describes only one part of the variety of processes that can be found in an organization. To obtain a ISO 9001 certificate, the organization therefore has to make sure that also for these processes the requirements of ISO 9001 are met.

ISO 9001 requires a quality management system at organizational level. In contrast to this, the V-Modell defines procedures and approaches for projects. Here the project-specific process model is derived from an organization-specific process model on the basis of the V-Modell (see »Introduction and Maintenance of an Organization-Specific Process Model). Thus ISO 9001 and the V-Modell have different objectives. As a result, the V-Modell does not cover requirements of ISO 9001 that apply to more than one project, such as the establishment and the maintenance of a quality management system or the definition of an organization-wide quality policy. The V-Modell ensures, however, that the organization-wide requirements, as far as they concern the product development process, are implemented in the projects.

Starting with the points of the structure of ISO 9001, this »Mapping to Standards considers to what extent the requirements described in the ISO 9001 are met by the V-Modell at project level or - when the introduction, measurement and improvement of processes is concerned - by the »Process Module »Introduction and Maintenance of an Organization-Specific Process Model at the organizational level.