The mystery of an IAF Mandatory Document disappearance

[Sidney Vianna]

The IAF has been releasing mandatory documents for many years and we have been following the development of such documents @ the IAF Mandatory Documents (MD Series) as of May 2019 thread since 2008. About 3 years ago, in May 2016, I made a post about the release of the IAF MD19 document, titled IAF Mandatory Document For The Audit and Certification of a Management System operated by a Multi-Site organization (where application of site sampling is not appropriate). I know this to be a controversial subject in some areas, but this document is no longer available for download from the IAF website page where such documents are listed. No word (that I could find at the IAF website) about the reason for the document vanishing.

 

[Marc]

Website reorganization/revision?

 

[Sidney Vianna]

For sure not. The document's application date was March 31st, 2017. It looks like that, after releasing the document and allowing it to be in effect, the IAF pulled it from the public. Why? I can only speculate, but, knowing what I know about how controversial the subject is, I suspect some important stakeholders disagreed with the contents and, somehow, the document got pulled from circulation.

 

[Marc]

It wouldn't surprise me. There are a lot of private agendas going on in most of the groups like the IAF.

 

[Marcelo]

Technical Bulletin – Publication of IAF MD 1: 2018

A new version of IAF MD 1 - IAF Mandatory Document for the Audit and Certification of a Management System operated by a Multi-Site Organisation - was published by IAF (International Accreditation Forum) on 29 January 2018. This Technical Bulletin is to clarify the implementation requirements and UKAS approach.

The new document immediately replaced IAF MD1: 2007 and IAF MD 19 which are both now obsolete.

 

[Marcelo]

You can also find it per Google: (broken link removed)

 

[Sidney Vianna]

Technical Bulletin – Publication of IAF MD 1: 2018

Thanks Marcelo. I was aware of the latest IAF MD1, but I did not realize that IAF MD19 had been incorporated there. The IAF could have put a note on the page where IAF MD19 used to be listed.