Re: What are the Reasons for the Decline of ISO 9001 Registrations in North America?
In my opinion, that is one of the reasons for the decline: ludicrous feedback from CB auditors, in many cases. If I were in the receiving end of an external audit and got this type of "audit result", I would seriously question the value of that relationship.
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if I were in the receiving end of a finding as the one Bev reported, I would be having a serious conversation with a manager at the CB and make them understand that, if this is representative of their auditors performance, they would not be my CB for long.
I can't believe an idiot auditor would cause ANY client company to give up ISO registration. Even idiot managers of those registrars would only instigate a change of registrars, not withdrawal from ISO certification/registration.
If, however, the client company was so unsophisticated about ISO and dealing with registrars that such an event triggered withdrawal versus change of registrar, perhaps their loss from the pool of ISO registered companies is good - they probably didn't NEED registration to satisfy customers and they were obviously not receiving "value added"from their registrar.
As much as I agree, Sidney, with your statements about value-added auditing, your suggestion that the decline in certifications is due, in part, to poor auditing is doesn't quite jive...
Organizations coming new to certification, don't generally know much about the poor auditors, in my experience, and the result of poor auditor performance isn't voluntary withdrawal of certification, it's transfer to another CB. Many companies don't have the opportunity to withdraw from certification, at least in their perception.
Yep. There's that old bugaboo - perception! After so many years, it's amazing to me that ISO registration has made so little penetration into the minds of business leaders/managers. Bottom line for most managers is -
"If my customers don't DEMAND it, why should I waste time learning about it?"
Andy, there are many organizations out there that have been through several (3-year) certification cycles and different CB's and auditors, with a dismal perception of the auditing profession. In a deep recession, organizations tend to dissociate themselves from non value adding activities. If I (wrongly or rightly) believe that CB audits don't add value to my operation and my customers' demands for certification are not as clear as they used to be, I might decide to take a risk and drop certification altogether or "transfer" my certification to the guy down the street that only charges me $500 per year and does not mandate those pesky and intrusive audits to issue my certificate. I rely on my customer ignorance not to discern from a reputable certificate from one that really does not mean anything.
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To me, the NUMBER of certificates is secondary to the VALIDITY of certificates as a component of supplier oversight. Confidence in the certification process is much more critical than the growth of certification numbers, in my estimation.
Nevertheless, the decline in certificates must be attributed, IN PART, to the fact that potential users of the certificates don't see tangible benefits. Otherwise, how can you explain that we do not have many more mandates for management system certification?
Yes! Said more elegantly than I would have. I do have a question about those $500 certificates, though. If the transfer to such a registrar from the idiot mentioned by BEV saves money and there is literally no change from the customer's viewpoint, would you agree the client (auditee) made a good choice? How would such a change affect the survey? I presume the "$500 registrars" aren't polled.
As the market began to decline many companies went back to their core suppliers, product, customers, process and other historic activities of success.
As this has occurred we were more concerned with our own system being implemented at our suppliers. So, for example, we had three suppliers for one part number. We reduced that from those three to one small supplier which had been the first to supply us this product. By no longer managing two additional suppliers we were able to focus our SQA and Engineeing activity on the one supplier (thank you Dr. Deming).
In order to meet our demand they moved away from some other product lines of which the customer also required ISO certification.
Now we and two other customers are their customer base. Both us and the other two companies require either a certification to ISO or to the "company" Production System by our Engineering and SQA deparment.
From that small suppliers point of view they could get the same results of having us or their other customers audit their facility for free. So, our efforts to get back to the core or historic success indirectly lead this supplier to no longer be third party certified.
I am not sure how far reaching this is. Off the top of my head I can only think of this one of all of our suppliers which are no longer certified. But, I am a sample size of one and we all that one is not a trend.
For ten years (1990 - 2000), I declared my business "compliant" to ISO and QS 9000. My customers, including automotive, aerospace, and medical (we
were FDA registered), never skipped a beat. They sent us self-assessment queries which we answered (we did have an awesome package to send) and simply added us to the supply chain, regardless if they ostensibly demanded "registration" to ISO or QS. In ten years, we had maybe two formal customer audits (Boeing was one.) The copies of letters of acceptance from the customers was added to the package and other customers accepted that in lieu of formal registration. If I were a top manager looking at my supply chain today, I'd probably do the same as those customers did back in the 90's.
Your SUPPLIERS audit you?
Welcome to the world of typos, Sidney. I seem to be continually correcting typos in MY posts, often going back 5 or 6 years when an old thread gets resurrected and I notice my previous typo as I read through the posts. As I recall,there was a similar typo in one of your posts, regardless whether it was clipped and pasted or transcribed, it was still in YOUR post.
