International Organization for Standardization has recently published ISO 9001:2008 which is the basic requirements for a quality management system that an organization must fulfil to demonstrate its ability to consistently provide products that enhance customer satisfaction and meet applicable statutory and regulatory requirements. Not many empirical researches based on ISO 9001:2008 have been done up until now. In this article we outline transitional features for ISO 9000 quality management system (QMS) since its first publication in 1987. In order to effectively maintain ISO 9001:2008 QMS certification and continuously enhance quality management activities, we perform statistical analysis for the minor nonconformity data generated from follow-up audits for subcontractors of shipbuilding industry based on ISO 9001:2008 requirements. A Kruskal-Wallis test is used to show relationships between the minor nonconformity data and three classification criteria: the type of business, the size of business, and the number of follow-up audits.