I have spent thirty years auditing the world’s quality management systems. I am writing now, in my own voice, about where the next ten years are going.

Over those years I have conducted more than fifteen hundred third-party engagements across ISO 9001, ISO 14001, IATF 16949, ISO 17025, ISO 50001, and Canada’s nuclear standards CSA N299 and CSA N286. The work has spanned precision manufacturers, automotive suppliers, testing and calibration laboratories, nuclear suppliers, and defence suppliers. I have been an early practitioner and advocate of remote auditing in Canada, years before a pandemic forced the rest of the profession to follow.

None of those credentials, by themselves, are the point. What they have given me is a long view — the rare seat from which you watch how quality, governance, and assurance actually evolve inside organisations, not how they are described in textbooks. Along the way, I have trained, mentored, and qualified auditors across two of Canada’s major certification bodies.

What I write about here is what the next decade of QMS auditing looks like from inside the profession. The questions I find interesting are not always the ones the trade press is asking. Some are about technology — AI, automation, agentic systems making decisions inside the management system. Some are about the standards themselves, and how they quietly reshape what an auditor is. Some are about the deeper craft: sampling, judgment, evidence, competence, and what thirty years of doing the work leaves you with. Some of the most demanding audits of my career have been in Canada’s nuclear sector — supplier and laboratory work where the standards are unforgiving and the consequences of an inattentive auditor cannot be undone. I write as a practitioner, because the auditors and quality leaders I have worked alongside for three decades deserve a clearer view of the next ten years than the consulting reports tend to provide.

Santosh Vasudevan is a Lead Auditor and AI-QMS Strategist with over 30 years of quality management experience and more than 1,500 third-party audits across ISO 9001, ISO 14001, IATF 16949, ISO 17025, ISO 50001, and CSA nuclear standards (N299, N286). He is PMP-certified and ISO 27001:2022 Lead Auditor certified, and an early practitioner and advocate of remote auditing in Canada.

Write to me at santosh@santoshvasudevan.com.