Transport

Railway Industry: IRIS (International Railway Industry Standard) – ISO/TS 22163

Motivation and benefits

IRIS (International Railway Industry Standard) is a rail related business management system that has existed since 2006 and is applied worldwide. It focuses on the overall value added chain (design and development, sales, purchasing, production and service), incl. the underlying project management.

In 2017, this standard, which had specially been developed for the rail industry by UNIFE (Association of European Railway Industries) and supplements the ISO 9001 requirements by adding rail specific requirements, became ISO/TS 22163.

2023 saw the next transition to ISO 22163:2023, which, together with the IRIS Certification® Performance Assessment rules, the IRIS Web Database and the IRIS Audit Tool, forms the basis for certification in accordance with IRIS Rev. 4.

The express aim of IRIS certification is to continuously improve both the management system and the associated product and service quality. Traceable documentation and systematic supplier management as well as the availability of products and spare parts are essential, especially for products in the railway sector with a service life of up to 40 years!

Basically ISO 22163:2023 includes ISO 9001, which has been supplemented and extended by adding many aspects, such as project management, initial sampling (FAI - First Article Inspection), RAMS (Reliability, Accessibility, Maintainability and Safety) or life cycle costs.

Significance for the railway industry

Almost 3,000 companies in over 50 countries are already IRIS-certified and a further 1,000 companies are registered in the IRIS portal, where all IRIS-certified companies are listed.

Railway operators, system integrators and suppliers in the rail industry are increasingly requiring valid IRIS certification or are using the IRIS portal specifically to search for new suppliers.

Benefits

The benefits that can be drawn from an IRIS certification can be seen in different manners and are available to all stakeholders:

Rail operators and system integrators:

A clear focus on project management and a look at the overall value added chain as well as on the topics of reliability, availability, safety, obsolescence management and the life cycle costs are to help to minimize costs just as much as problems with product quality. Confidence in the carrying capacity and sustainability of the contractual relationships, which are usually on a long-term basis, increases.

Component suppliers:

The IRIS certification is based on a level of maturity, and organizations will be given a differentiated feedback relating to the three central issues (overall maturity, customer focus, performance of the critical processes). This is why an IRIS certification is a veritable tool enabling systematic development of the management system and thus of the company as a whole.

Furthermore, renowned system integrators have promised not to conduct any customer-supplier system audits in case companies are certified acc. to IRIS. It is true that first article and acceptance inspections continue to be made. In this respect, however, a focus will be put on the product and its production process. This can also set an impulse for the further development of the company.

Upon successful completion of the IRIS certification, the companies can also apply for an ISO 9001 certificate. Except for the fees for the certificate, no additional audit expenditure incur.

Audits

An IRIS Rev. 3 certification audit is based on three pillars:

  • ISO 22163:2023
  • IRIS Certification® Performance Assessment (regulations for the assessment method and the certification process)
  • IRIS Certification® technology (portal; database; audit tool)

Thanks to this and thanks to the high quality requirements placed on the IRIS Auditors, transparency as well as benefits that can be drawn by the customers will be as high as possible.

Just as in ISO 9001, the audit will consist of questions that can be answered by classifying the result as being “implemented” or “not implemented”. These will be supplemented by asking questions that can be answered by means of 5-grade levels of maturity (“insufficient” to “optimized”). As a result, the companies will get feedback about their maturity in % degree of implementation.

All the registered IRIS Auditors are subject to a rigid selection procedure and are rail experts that have experience in business systems as well as rail specific knowledge. The auditors are obliged to undergo periodic knowledge checks and further trainings.

Accreditation

After the accreditation process has been run through successfully, Quality Austria has been the only Austrian Certification Body to be accredited for IRIS (International Railway Industry Standard) by UNIFE (Association of European Railway Industries) since December 2014.

Other relevant standards

ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001, SCC, ISO 31000, ISO 50001

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