Nigel Howard Croft

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Nigel Howard Croft (born 1956 in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, UK) is a globally recognized authority [1] [2] [3] [4] on quality management and conformity assessment. He retired as Chairman of the ISO Joint Technical Coordination Group for Management System Standards in December 2023 after serving a three-year term, having been appointed by ISO's Technical Management Board in December 2020. During his tenure, he coordinated the deployment of the ISO London Declaration on Climate Action into all ISO Management System Standards, requiring organizations that implement these standards to determine the extent to which climate change can affect their results and the ways in which their activities can have a (positive or negative) impact on climate change. This can then lead to the implementation of risk-based adaptation and mitigation strategies. [5] Dr Croft was previously Chair of the ISO Technical Committee TC 176/SC 2 from February 2010 until December 2018, [6] with overall responsibility for the ISO 9001 standard, used worldwide as a basis for certification of quality management systems, and the ISO 9004 guidelines standard aimed at improving organisational performance, among others. In 2019 and 2020 he led the revision of "Annex SL" of the ISO Directives, that forms the basis for over 40 management system standards including those on environmental management (ISO 14001), Occupational Health and Safety (ISO 45001), Information Security (ISO/IEC 27001), Anti-bribery (ISO 37001), Food Safety (ISO 22000), Artificial Intelligence (ISO/IEC 42001) and many more.

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Education

Nigel Croft attended Oakwood Comprehensive School, Rotherham from 1967 to 1972 and subsequently Thomas Rotherham College (formerly Rotherham Grammar School). First in his family to go to university, he graduated with First Class Honours in Natural Sciences and with an Honorary Senior Scholarship from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1977. After a short period in industry, he returned to academia to carry out postgraduate research in Metallurgy and Materials Science at Sheffield University under the tutelage of Prof Sir Graeme Davies. He received a PhD in 1981 for his work on the fracture characteristics and mechanisms in cast steel, and was awarded the Brunton Medal for Research Excellence. In 1981, he received a Harkness Fellowship from the Commonwealth Fund, to conduct post-doctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, on the low temperature impact strength of welds in microalloyed steel after induction bending for use in high pressure gas pipelines.

Career

Following a family tradition, Nigel Croft began his career in the local South Yorkshire steel industry, at British Steel Corporation’s Special Steels Division in Rotherham. He began work in the quality control department in 1974, first as a student apprentice, and later as a Graduate Metallurgist. After returning from post-doctoral research work in the US, he joined J.P. Kenny and Partners as a Senior Metallurgist, working on supplier evaluations for high pressure gas pipelines in the North Sea and elsewhere. In 1984 he married Naila Diniz (also a PhD metallurgist from Sheffield University), and emigrated to Brazil. The two worked in the Diniz family-owned specialty steel company Eletrometal S.A. until the company was sold in the mid-1990s, and became known as Villares Metals, part of the Voest-Alpine Group of companies. Nigel's interest in Quality Management began during this time, when he coordinated the adaptation of Eletrometal's quality management system to meet the requirements of the ISO 9002 standard (now superseded), in 1992.

Nigel Croft currently sits on the Board of a number of organizations around the world, and in 2011 he was appointed visiting professor at the Business School of UUM (University of Northern Malaysia)

Contribution to International Standards

As a member of the Brazilian delegation to ISO/TC176, the ISO Technical Committee responsible for Quality Management and the ISO 9000 family of standards, Nigel Croft was responsible for coordinating the implementation of and transition to the year 2000 revision of those standards. [7] After over 15 years of active involvement with ISO/TC 176, he was appointed as Chairman of its Subcommittee SC 2 in 2010, with responsibility for the ISO 9001 requirements standard and the ISO 9004 guidelines standard, among others. ISO/TC 176/SC 2 has participation from over 80 countries represented via their National Standards Bodies, as well as liaison organisations representing industry groups and other interested parties. There are now over 1,000,000 organisations worldwide that are certified as meeting ISO 9001, which sets out requirements for organisations to be able to demonstrate their ability to consistently provide their customers with conforming products and services. During his tenure, he provided overall leadership for the major revision of ISO 9001, published in 2015, the ISO Technical Specification ISO/TS 9002:2016 (Guidance on the Application of ISO 9001:2015), the ISO guide "ISO 9001:2015 for small enterprises - What to do?", also published in 2016 and ISO 9004:2018 ("Quality of an organisation — Guidance to achieve sustained success").

ISO 9001 was the first of many management system standards published by ISO. Others include ISO 14001 (Environmental Management), ISO 22000 (Food Safety Management), ISO 27001 (Information Security Management), ISO 37001 (Anti-Bribery Management) and ISO 45001 (Occupational Health & Safety Management). In order to ensure alignment and consistency of these standards, and to facilitate their implementation in an integrated manner by all kinds of organizations, in 2012 ISO published a set of rules ("Annex SL" to the ISO Directives ) to apply to all new management system standards and revisions to existing ones. After completing his term of office as chair of ISO/TC 176/SC 2 in December 2018, Nigel Croft was appointed as convener of the ISO Joint Technical Coordination Group Task Force responsible for the revision of these rules, which were subsequently published in the May 2021 version of the ISO/IEC Directives.

Awards

In 2017, Croft was awarded the American Society for Quality's Freund-Marquardt medal, [8] with a citation that reads “For his passion, dedication and leadership in the application of quality management principles to the development, promotion and implementation of quality management system standards on a global scale, for over twenty years”, and in 2018 an Honorary Award from the UK's Chartered Quality Institute. According to the CQI website: [9] "This award recognises those who have moved the quality profession or the quality discipline forward over a number of years. Nigel won this award for his substantial contribution to the evolution of the ISO 9000 family – the world’s most popular set of quality management standards. His leadership on the development of ISO 9001, among other major standards, has given companies worldwide the tools to drive improvement and embed quality across all aspects of the business".

Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Organization for Standardization</span> International standards development organization

The International Organization for Standardization is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Article 3 of the ISO Statutes.

A quality management system (QMS) is a collection of business processes focused on consistently meeting customer requirements and enhancing their satisfaction. It is aligned with an organization's purpose and strategic direction. It is expressed as the organizational goals and aspirations, policies, processes, documented information, and resources needed to implement and maintain it. Early quality management systems emphasized predictable outcomes of an industrial product production line, using simple statistics and random sampling. By the 20th century, labor inputs were typically the most costly inputs in most industrialized societies, so focus shifted to team cooperation and dynamics, especially the early signaling of problems via a continual improvement cycle. In the 21st century, QMS has tended to converge with sustainability and transparency initiatives, as both investor and customer satisfaction and perceived quality are increasingly tied to these factors. Of QMS regimes, the ISO 9000 family of standards is probably the most widely implemented worldwide – the ISO 19011 audit regime applies to both and deals with quality and sustainability and their integration.

The ISO 9000 family is a set of five quality management systems (QMS) standards by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that help organizations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service. ISO 9000 deals with the fundamentals of QMS, including the seven quality management principles that underlie the family of standards. ISO 9001 deals with the requirements that organizations wishing to meet the standard must fulfill. ISO 9002 is a model for quality assurance in production and installation. ISO 9003 for quality assurance in final inspection and test. ISO 9004 gives guidance on achieving sustained organizational success.

ISO 14000 is a family of standards by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) related to environmental management that exists to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations negatively affect the environment ; (b) comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other environmentally oriented requirements; and (c) continually improve in the above.

Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service consistently functions well. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement. Quality management is focused not only on product and service quality, but also on the means to achieve it. Quality management, therefore, uses quality assurance and control of processes as well as products to achieve more consistent quality. Quality control is also part of quality management. What a customer wants and is willing to pay for it, determines quality. It is a written or unwritten commitment to a known or unknown consumer in the market. Quality can be defined as how well the product performs its intended function.

ISO/IEC 20000 is the international standard for IT service management. It was developed in 2005 by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7 and revised in 2011 and 2018. It was originally based on the earlier BS 15000 that was developed by BSI Group.

AS9100 is a widely adopted and standardized quality management system for the aerospace industry. It was released in October, 1999, by the Society of Automotive Engineers and the European Association of Aerospace Industries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ISO 22000</span> Food safety standard

ISO 22000 is a food safety management system by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) which is outcome focused, providing requirements for any organization in the food industry with objective to help to improve overall performance in food safety. These standards are intended to ensure safety in the global food supply chain. The standards involve the overall guidelines for food safety management and also focuses on traceability in the feed and food chain.

ISO 13485Medical devices -- Quality management systems -- Requirements for regulatory purposes is a voluntary standard, published by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for the first time in 1996, and contains a comprehensive quality management system for the design and manufacture of medical devices. The latest version of this standard supersedes earlier documents such as EN 46001 and EN 46002 (1996), the previously published ISO 13485, and ISO 13488.

In business, engineering, and manufacturing, quality – or high quality – has a pragmatic interpretation as the non-inferiority or superiority of something ; it is also defined as being suitable for the intended purpose while satisfying customer expectations. Quality is a perceptual, conditional, and somewhat subjective attribute and may be understood differently by different people. Consumers may focus on the specification quality of a product/service, or how it compares to competitors in the marketplace. Producers might measure the conformance quality, or degree to which the product/service was produced correctly. Support personnel may measure quality in the degree that a product is reliable, maintainable, or sustainable. In such ways, the subjectivity of quality is rendered objective via operational definitions and measured with metrics such as proxy measures.

ISO 28000:2022, Security and resilience – Security management systems – Requirements, is a management system standard published by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that specifies requirements for a security management system including aspects relevant to the supply chain.

ISO 10007 "Quality management — Guidelines for configuration management" is the ISO standard that gives guidance on the use of configuration management within an organization. "It is applicable to the support of products from concept to disposal." The standard was originally published in 1995, and was updated in 2003 and 2017. Its guidance is specifically recommended for meeting "the product identification and traceability requirements" introduced in ISO 9001:2015 and AS9100 Rev D.

ISO/TC 176 is Technical Committee 176 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), responsible for Quality management and quality assurance - the ISO 9000 family of standards.

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 Information security, cybersecurity and privacy protection is a standardization subcommittee of the Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 develops International Standards, Technical Reports, and Technical Specifications within the field of information security. Standardization activity by this subcommittee includes general methods, management system requirements, techniques and guidelines to address information security, cybersecurity and privacy. Drafts of International Standards by ISO/IEC JTC 1 or any of its subcommittees are sent out to participating national standardization bodies for ballot, comments and contributions. Publication as an ISO/IEC International Standard requires approval by a minimum of 75% of the national bodies casting a vote. The international secretariat of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 is the Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) located in Germany.

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 7 Software and systems engineering is a standardization subcommittee of the Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), that develops and facilitates standards within the field of engineering of software products and systems. The international secretariat of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 7 is the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) located in India.

The Annex SL is a section of the ISO/IEC Directives part 1 that prescribes how ISO Management System Standard (MSS) standards should be written. The aim of Annex SL is to enhance the consistency and alignment of MSS by providing a unifying and agreed-upon high level structure, identical core text and common terms and core definitions. The aim being that all ISO Type A MSS are aligned and the compatibility of these standards is enhanced.

ISO 37001Anti-bribery management systems - Requirements with guidance for use, is a management system standard published by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 2016. As the title suggests, this standard sets out the requirements for the establishment, implementation, operation, maintenance, and continual improvement of an anti-bribery management system (ABMS). It also provides guidance on the actions and approaches organizations can take to adhere to the requirements of this standard.

ISO 22301:2019, Security and resilience – Business continuity management systems – Requirements, is a management system standard published by International Organization for Standardization that specifies requirements to plan, establish, implement, operate, monitor, review, maintain and continually improve a documented management system to protect against, reduce the likelihood of occurrence, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disruptive incidents when they arise. It is intended to be applicable to all organizations, or parts thereof, regardless of type, size and nature of the organization.

ISO/IEC 90003Software engineering -- Guidelines for the application of ISO 9001:2008 to computer software is a guidelines developed for organizations in the application of ISO 9001 to the acquisition, supply, development, operation and maintenance of computer software and related support services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ISO 21001</span>

ISO 21001, Educational Organization Management Systems, is a published international standard by the International Organization for Standardization, and released on May 1, 2018. It is intended provide a common management tool for organizations providing educational products and services capable of meeting learner and other beneficiary needs and expectations and it focuses on the specific interaction between an educational organization, the learner, and other relevant interested parties.

References

  1. ↑ International Telecommunications Union. "International Telecommunications Union". Irca.org. Retrieved 2012-01-01.
  2. ↑ "ISO/TC176/SC2 Chairman, Dr Nigel Croft, receives an award from the ASQ". committee.iso.org. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  3. ↑ administrator (2019-04-18). "Dr Nigel Croft". Harkness Fellows. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  4. ↑ "The International Quality Awards – 2018 winners announced | CQI | IRCA". www.quality.org. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  5. ↑ "Deploying ISO's London Declaration to Climate Action via Management System Standards". committee.iso.org. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  6. ↑ "Technical committees - TC 176/SC 2 - Quality systems". ISO. Retrieved 2012-01-01.
  7. ↑ "HOME". Canteach.candu.org. Archived from the original on 2011-09-27. Retrieved 2012-01-01.
  8. ↑ "Awards and Scholarships | ASQ".
  9. ↑ "The International Quality Awards – 2018 winners announced". 9 April 2018.
  10. ↑ "Standards and public policy: A toolkit for national standards bodies" (PDF).
  11. ↑ "Benefits and challenges of remote conformity assessment". www.quality.org. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  12. ↑ "Smart Quality Infrastructure - Shaping a sustainable future" (PDF).
  13. ↑ "Implications of remote conformity assessment for developing countries" (PDF). www.unido.org. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  14. ↑ "OFFSHORE TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE. 2022. (OTC 2022) (6 VOLS)". proceedings.com. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  15. ↑ "Quality Policy - A practical tool" (PDF).
  16. ↑ "Society of Manufacturing Engineers". Sme.org. Archived from the original on 2011-09-28. Retrieved 2012-01-01.
  17. ↑ "Download Our New eBook and Find All 38 Big Opportunities in ISO 9001:2008". Archive.constantcontact.com. Retrieved 2012-01-01.
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