World Accreditation Day 2019 - consistent accreditation?

[Sidney Vianna]

As part of the celebration of the World Accreditation Day, a video clip was produced:

At the end of the clip, a statement is offered:

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But, is that true? Is accreditation consistent around the World?

In my experience that is not the case. For example, dealing with accreditation body auditors, I have seen tremendous variation, no different than what we see with auditors working for certification bodies. I have experienced highly competent AB auditors who were extremely professional, competent and knowledgeable; but I have also experienced mediocrity in auditing.

In the Aviation, Space and Defense sectors, the overwhelming majority of CB suspensions was in the Americas sector, when I was involved. Rare cases of European and Asia Pacific sector CB's ever getting some form of penalties imposed by the respective AB's. Even in the Americas sector, INMETRO had a very different level of participation compared to ANAB.

And, in the Automotive world, a question that I have already asked several times: Why did the IATF bypass the AB's and perform oversight of CB's directly?

AB's through their peer reviews don't scrutinize each other as deeply and thoroughly as they should, in my experience. In my opinion, AB's should be subjected to oversight by organizations that represent industry and society to close the loop. In a few cases of Industry Controlled Certification Schemes, such as the IAQG AS91X0 and the TIA TL-9000 schemes, AB's undergo oversight audits, but the scope and extent of that oversight is limited.

 

[Jen Kirley]

I regret to confirm there is not enough consistency, especially from region to region. For example, in assigning the number of audit days we are all expected (or so I had thought) to adhere to MD-5, but I have seen some mysterious outcomes from audit day calculations among nations.

 

[Jean_B]

In my opinion, AB's should be subjected to oversight by organizations that represent industry and society to close the loop.

I think this is the core issue at hand, and the weakest link currently. Without this cycle of society (which includes industry as well as others) controlling these empowered bodies through something else than the passive distance of legislation or resource-constrained (and occasionally politically diverted) bottleneck of government we (society) will always be behind the game, region-specific, guessing at some stakeholders' needs, and have regulations written in blood (or at least after it).
If we were looking at it from an optimization standpoint, we wouldn't be adding procedures (more legislation), or additional inline controls (inspections), or more oversight (audits/inspections), especially from a resource-constraint perspective. We would by now be having a good look at our design principles, the actual needs we have/are trying to meet, and perhaps cleaning up what we require so that what we want can be met by what we have.
Because the ever increasing drive for safety or quality (effectiveness) has a cost, one that conflicts with an ever increasing desire for that continuing decrease in cost/delay (economy), and to which we are adding efficiency (environmental).
I'm afraid that in this regard a specific group in the cycle needs to realize they need to grow up as well: the consumer. And it will be hard, for people to accept sometimes casualties happen and this is regarded as acceptable (just look at the case-studies for risk management versus court trials), that sometimes time needs to be given to become certain or to complete all aspects of something, and that enduring efficiency takes more time and cannot (yet) be achieved without the inconvenience of maintenance/service/reprocessing. And that without investment in all of the parts of the population working on this (don't supercharge only top management, or a limited number of specialists to duke it out with the few specialists on oversight) it will be even harder. True gains are made at the location where the work is done, but these people are often not fully informed about all these aspects. Ford wanted his workers to buy his products, perhaps society/industry needs to teach its people to want the things it takes to get effectiveness, economy and efficiency. But i can see the conflict as what I see as an adolescent society needs to teach its actual adolescent persons, and perhaps earlier, to want those while balancing its recent urge to increase freedom.

 

[Randy]

I had a guy sitting next to me on a flight from DFW to San Diego one day that I noticed was reading an ISO Standard and making notes, so acting dumb (easy for me) I asked him about it after telling him that I'd done some internal auditing for an employer (not a lie). In short he told me that he worked for an AB and was on his way to do an audit of a CB doing an audit and he had to get familiar with the standard he wasn't that familiar with...Oops!

 

[Sidney Vianna]

I regret to confirm there is not enough consistency, especially from region to region. For example, in assigning the number of audit days we are all expected (or so I had thought) to adhere to MD-5, but I have seen some mysterious outcomes from audit day calculations among nations.

Jen, a highly influential person in the accredited certification world made a "shocking and blunt" statement about accreditation, all the way back in 2005. As far as I can tell the statement has been purged from access but I've captured it, including the source in this post. It is about time we seriously address this, on a global scale.