Discontinuing ISO 9001 certification

G

GOUMAN

Has anyone experienced discontinuing their certification? After deliberating over the issue our company has decided to drop from ISO certification. What now? How long has anyone allowed registrar logos to continue on business forms before destroying them? How about banners? What are others doing in this instance?
 

Ninja

Looking for Reality
Trusted Information Resource
Something else to consider during the change:

- Some of what you did for getting and maintaining ISO9001 cert was helpful and value added to your company.
- Some of it was a waste that you did just for the cert.

Take a good long look at what things fall in what categories.
Then stop the useless things and protect the useful ones.

Stopping an ISO cert and stopping the use of a functioning QMS are two different things.
One is understandable....the other is a true waste.
 
J

JoShmo

Has anyone experienced discontinuing their certification? After deliberating over the issue our company has decided to drop from ISO certification. What now? How long has anyone allowed registrar logos to continue on business forms before destroying them? How about banners? What are others doing in this instance?

Do you get zero value from it? It doesn't open doors for you? Get you in front of customers who'd prefer you ARE certified? Do you have it on your website (or do you just have "We're ISO" - which anyone can claim). Did you use a register who has credibility or did you by "cheap". If you did a lot of the things to promote your certification I doubt you'd be seeing zero value and dropping it...
 
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Mrs Shrew

Anecdotally speaking - My company dropped ISO after nearly 20 years because they felt it was a waste of time and mostly a paperwork exercise. It had run its course and there was nothing new to discover or improve upon. It was only a small business of 15 people so it was easy enough to control.

I visited recently and they still maintained the QMS to an extent, the best practices were kept, such as appraisals, certain forms and procedures, but they abandoned the hoop-jumping like QMS reviews, evidence of this, evidence of that.

Ultimately the ISO represents the best way for a business to operate, if you're operating the best you can then the rest is peripheral.
 

Mikishots

Trusted Information Resource
Anecdotally speaking - My company dropped ISO after nearly 20 years because they felt it was a waste of time and mostly a paperwork exercise. It had run its course and there was nothing new to discover or improve upon. It was only a small business of 15 people so it was easy enough to control.

I visited recently and they still maintained the QMS to an extent, the best practices were kept, such as appraisals, certain forms and procedures, but they abandoned the hoop-jumping like QMS reviews, evidence of this, evidence of that.

Ultimately the ISO represents the best way for a business to operate, if you're operating the best you can then the rest is peripheral.

I think that if those were the true sentiments, ISO has no value for the company - it was never embraced or fully understood and accepted. With that mindset, it would only serve to be a liability.

The intent and spirit of the standard was lost, and without it, there is only resistance.
 

gpainter

Quite Involved in Discussions
Self certification is a way to go also and save the money. Usually happens with companies that have been registered for awhile and have fairly mature systems in place. I would definitely let your Customers know why you are doing this. There should be a thread where we had discussed this years back. Do a search "ISO 9000 manifesto" should get you to a past discussion. I have put away most of my ISO, as I am not involved in this much anymore. Here was my comment to the thread back then. would be interesting to see how many of these companies have self-declared?

"This thread seems to focus on the ICSCA (Industry Cooperation on Standards and Conformity Assessment) and their 40 Resolution Manifesto, as I believe that it was called. In April of 98 there were 58 members including : Bell Labs, Boeing, Ford, GM, HP, IBM, UT, Texas Instruments, Lucent, etc. They were calling for self-declarition to ISO by the year 2005, mainly due to the high cost of registration. Resolution 9 covered ISO 9000,Resolution 17 covered ISO 14001,Resolution 19 covered Occupational Health and Safety, Resolution 25 covered Social Accountability and Resolution cover the distribution of standards "free of charge",which has been discussed in other threads."
 
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Sidney Vianna

Post Responsibly
Leader
Admin
Self certification is a way to go also and save the money. Usually happens with companies that have been registered for awhile and have fairly mature systems in place. I would definitely let your Customers know why you are doing this.
According to the IAF, there is no such thing as "self-certification". Notwithstanding that, organizations could perform a self-declaration of compliance and ISO 17050 could be used as a standard to be followed for this self-declaration effort, in order to boost it's credibility.

"This thread seems to focus on the ICSCA (Industry Cooperation on Standards and Conformity Assessment) and their 40 Resolution Manifesto, as I believe that it was called. In April of 98 there were 58 members including : Bell Labs, Boeing, Ford, GM, HP, IBM, UT, Texas Instruments, Lucent, etc. They were calling for self-declarition to ISO by the year 2005, mainly due to the high cost of registration. Resolution 9 covered ISO 9000,Resolution 17 covered ISO 14001,Resolution 19 covered Occupational Health and Safety, Resolution 25 covered Social Accountability "
That whole effort led to the creation of the ASRP - Advanced Surveillance and Recertification Procedures, which is scarcely used, even by large corporations with highly mature systems.
 

Golfman25

Trusted Information Resource
Has anyone experienced discontinuing their certification? After deliberating over the issue our company has decided to drop from ISO certification. What now? How long has anyone allowed registrar logos to continue on business forms before destroying them? How about banners? What are others doing in this instance?

A lot has to do with your reasoning and logistics of certification. There is a big difference between dropping certification and dropping your quality system. I am all for dropping certification as it tends to be a costly, burdensome waste of time. However, having a quality system that follows the standards and actually works for you is worth it's weight in gold.

Now, check with your registrar, but I would think as soon as your certificate expires, you would no longer be able to use logos, statements, and such.
 
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