Is IAF drinking in the last chance saloon

[Paul Simpson]

Rumours abound in Tokyo that ISO is getting seriously annoyed about the standards of 3rd party certification and the damage it is doing to the ISO 'brand.' The rumour is that IAF have one last chance to do something about it before ISO step in.

Any thoughts, Covers?

[Ajit Basrur]

On what basis does ISO think that 'ISO' brand is getting damaged

[Paul Simpson]

In Reply to Parent Post by Ajit Basrur

On what basis does ISO think that 'ISO' brand is getting damaged

Simply when people get bad product / service from an organisation that is claiming to be ISO 9001 compliant (because they hold a certificate from a 3rd party) the buyer believes that ISO are somehow involved!

Hopefully we on the cove are aware that ISO play no part in the assessment and certification process but the average person in the street does not know. Hence ISO's concern.

[AndyN]

In Reply to Parent Post by Paul Simpson

Rumours abound in Tokyo that ISO is getting seriously annoyed about the standards of 3rd party certification and the damage it is doing to the ISO 'brand.' The rumour is that IAF have one last chance to do something about it before ISO step in.

Any thoughts, Covers?

Yes, indeed, Paul........

I would hope that 'the ISO folks' would see that by emphasizing the role CBs and their auditors have had is going back in time and philosophy to the Quality Control era. Applying pressure to the people who check on quality never worked, did it. Indeed, ISO would be missing their own message of prevention vs detection......

Perhaps they'd point out that there is no balance in accredited training, for a start. There are no accredited 'Management' courses, even for a Management Representative! Clearly auditor training hasn't improved in years - the Lead Auditor course is pretty much out of step with anything an implementer needs to know to maintain an effective qms.......there should be more emphasis placed on the core of implementation and the qualifications of people tasked with it.

Certainly CBs are culpable in many ways. However, there's a lot more out there to 'clean up' as well.....

[Ajit Basrur]

Probably, ISO needs to initiate a Root Cause Analysis for 'Quality Deterioration' and come up with a 8D Report

[qualitymanager]

In Reply to Parent Post by Paul Simpson

Rumours abound in Tokyo that ISO is getting seriously annoyed about the standards of 3rd party certification and the damage it is doing to the ISO 'brand.' The rumour is that IAF have one last chance to do something about it before ISO step in.

Any thoughts, Covers?

And how would "ISO step in"?

As I understand it, 3rd party CBs are not required to be accredited. As such, 2 scenarios arise:

1. CB is accredited and falls under an AB, which (I expect) is subject to IAF rules and guidelines. IAF can use a "trickle-down" approach to change CB behaviour.

2. CB is NOT accredited. It is not subject to any external rules, unless there are legal requirements.

In neither scenario above does the CB have any contractual relationship with ISO.

How is ISO going to effect change in CB behaviour when they may not even know who all the CBs are?

[Paul Simpson]

OK, Devil's advocate here! If the 3rd party CBs were doing their jobs then companies who hadn't invested in training of their management reps. For example by making them become full members of an appropriate Institute wouldn't get to be certified in the first place.

I never liked to have to resort to it but in the event of a quality problem in the marketplace the first job was containment (stopping any more non-conforming product getting out there) and then sorting through existing stock to sort good from bad.

Is 3rd party certification so different?

[Paul Simpson]

Good questions all! Let me start off by saying I don't know.

As I mentioned these are all rumours at this stage - but I'll have a go!

In Reply to Parent Post by qualitymanager

And how would "ISO step in"?

As I understand it, 3rd party CBs are not required to be accredited. As such, 2 scenarios arise:

1. CB is accredited and falls under an AB, which (I expect) is subject to IAF rules and guidelines. IAF can use a "trickle-down" approach to change CB behaviour.

ISO could take over the right for accreditation bodies to accredit CBs to ISO 9001, 14001 etc. Their right would be exercised through copyright / trademark (see below). Bear in mind ISO / IEC 'owns' all the conformity assessment standards (17000 series) as well.

In Reply to Parent Post by qualitymanager

2. CB is NOT accredited. It is not subject to any external rules, unless there are legal requirements.

If ISO chooses to enforce its copyright it should (?) be able to prevent unapproved organisations from using copyright text and any trademarks ISO has.

In Reply to Parent Post by qualitymanager

In neither scenario above does the CB have any contractual relationship with ISO.

How is ISO going to effect change in CB behaviour when they may not even know who all the CBs are?

If ISO took over the 'approval' of CBs world wide there would probably (IMHO) be less confusion even than exists now.