Retention of ISO 9001 records

It is important that records are not destroyed before their useful life is over.
There are several factors to consider when determining the retention time for
records.

The duration of the contract – some records are only of value whilst the
contract is in force.

The life of the product – access to the records will probably not be needed for
some considerable time, possibly long after the contract has closed. On
defence contracts the contractor has to keep records for up to 20 years and
for product liability purposes, in the worst-case situation (taking account of
appeals) you could be asked to produce records up to 17 years after you
made the produc
The period between management system assessments – assessors may wish to see
evidence that corrective actions from the last assessment were taken. If the
period of assessment is three years and you dispose of the evidence after 2
years, you will have some difficulty in convincing the assessor that you
corrected the deficiency.
While the ISO 9001 requirement applies only to records, you may also need to
retain tools, jigs, fixtures, test software – in fact anything that is needed to repair
or reproduce equipment in order to honour your long-term commitments.
Should the customer specify a retention period greater than what you
prescribe in your procedures, special provisions will need to be made and this
is a potential area of risk. Customers may choose not to specify a particular
time and require you to seek approval before destruction. Any contract that
requires you to do something different creates a problem in conveying the
requirements to those who are to implement them. The simple solution is to
persuade your customer to accept your policy. You may not want to change
your procedures for one contract. If you can’t change the contract, the only
alternative is to issue special instructions. You may be better off storing the
records in a special contract store away from the normal store or alternatively
attach special labels to the files to alert the people looking after the archives.