All standards, no action

The purpose of third party certification against management system standards is to give interested parties confidence in an organization’s ability to control certain facets of its operation. It is not a business panacea. It never has been and never will be, despite the exaggerated claims of ISO 9001, its authors and owners. If we return to the original purpose of ISO 9001 and dismiss the hype, argues Nigel wickens, we will eliminate most of the critics.

Those who call for third party audits to add value and contribute to improvement are the very same people who cry foul about certification bodies providing consultancy. The former is simply a covered up version of the latter – so make your mind up. Surely it is up to management to run and improve their business and it is for third party auditors to be totally impartial and confine themselves to conformity with audit criteria.

Accreditation bodies, such as UKAS, and certification bodies are currently swirling around in a mindless world of debating competence. If we take ISO 9001 as an example we must ask, competence in what? Will this be the product, the manufacturing process, the product’s use, business process improvement, the function of top management, managing resources, design or any of the other elements of the standard? Finding auditors to meet apparent future competence criteria across all elements of the standard might prove difficult and if one element is to have priority which is to be and why?

ISO 9001:2000 (and no doubt ISO 9001:2008), has moved the standard away from a focus on products and services through quality assurance to managing business processes through quality management, indeed many believe a business management standard would be a better description and title for the document. We now seem to be experiencing accreditation bodies trying to counter this ill-conceived direction and feed their own hunger for growth by trying to convince the market that they are coming down hard on certification bodies with a concentration on competence. This falsely suggests that weaknesses in certification are all down to auditing rather than a poorly written ISO 9001 and misdirected accreditation.

Fully understood and properly used third party certification has a useful role in business. Unfortunately, it has become bureaucratic and is in danger of becoming very costly. Judging by the plethora of documents produced by globetrotting jobsworths (at everybody else’s expense) under the banners of ISO, IAF, EA and so on, this madness will expand, exacerbated by mindless navel gazing on processes rather than what really matters – the output. This applies to both certification and accreditation standards.

About the author

Nigel has worked with management systems since 1988 through certification, consultancy and training. He has worked for large and small CB’s and provided services to local authorities, multi-nationals and SME’s, plus the UK and Irish accreditation bodies. He is a director of Certification Management Ltd and XBS Business Solutions Ltd.