Rationale

This is a D37.02 and Main committee concurrent ballot to address persuasive negatives received from ballot item 002 of ballot D37 (25-06) with a close date of DECEMBER 4, 2025. All three negatives address the use of the word “must” in some opening descriptions of elements of a Quality Management System. A statement that these opening descriptions were not mandatory was included in the proposed wording. This improved version removes the definition of “must, renumbers the terms that follow this removed term, removes the statement about the use of the word “must” from the opening descriptions, and rewords paragraphs that used the term “must.” In addition, the term “continuous quality improvement” is changed to “continuous improvement” and the acronym CQI is changed to CI to align with D8222 and a work item in progress for a standard on continuous improvement. A few spelling errors are corrected. The entire content of the standard is included. Only the changes marked for deletion or addition are part of the ballot. Negatives concerning content that does not involve the marked-up content are out of scope. Any member may address other desired changes using the ASTM work item and ballot processes.