The rules are changing and time is short. If you are a manufacturing company or a service provider, there is a good chance that you have heard about standards such as ISO 9001. In fact, you may already be certified.

Whether you are certified or not, read on for some of the expected trends in the world of standards and certification for 2018.

Since our Management Review comes up in June, do I need to come up with new objectives every year?

Actually, you do not have to come up with new objectives every year. Especially if they are still working for you in the sense that you are still working on improving and they provide a good road-map for improvement.  If you feel any objective is redundant, has no value, or you have achieved it over and over again, then in that case, yes it is a good thing to update it. Look for another objective that can provide a platform for you to improve. Also, you may not update the objective but rather the actual goal or trigger, again, with the aim of improving. For example, if your objective was to reduce Non-Productive Time (NPT) by 5 hours and you already achieve over 10 hours in reduction, then you could increase your goal for the following year or period, to reduce NPT by 20 hours.

Should I assume the tracking of objectives is January through December even though my management review is scheduled for June?

If your objective is something like “We want to reduce downtime by 20% by Dec 2015”, then in that case, that objective has a shelf life. Otherwise, if your objectives have a goal of say “less than 10 hours of downtime per month”, then you can measure Jan through Dec or June to June. The Management Review does serve as a platform for resetting things but don’t feel compelled.  Going by the calendar year is acceptable if that is how you set your objectives.