There was an interesting discussion thread on the IRCA forum recently. After a while John Coggan posted this particularly insightful appraisal of the inherent problems and conflicts of interests with the current system of accredited certification. He also explores the question as to how competent the CBs may actually be in assessing the effectiveness of service provision. It was a nice piece of work, so I’ll just post it (having secured John’s permission first – thanks John) as it was written. It’s quite thought provoking

“There are 3 dichotomies that the CBs face and may or may not be competent in addressing them.

1. Certification value vs market share
2. Market legal/contractual obligations vs. certification cost
3. Value add vs operational cost
4. Delivery vs volume

All of these are conflicting requirements and will depend on management decisions and policy

1. Typical regional/country offices appoint their managers based on the need to increase certifications, hence audits and sometimes audit days sold as the indicator, operational costs, and sometimes market share leadership. The remainder is considered of secondary importance

2. Some countries demand that for tax exemption programs the organization be certified to 9001. Governments may require that to supply services to government entities compliance to 27001 is required. Note compliance and not certification. In any case companies will need the ” document” to offer services and products. They want to know what it takes to get it and will investigate available options. Typically they will decide on the lowest cost (not audit days) but logistical costs like transport and so on. Why pay for a competent english speaking auditor plus translator from London when there is a spanish speaking one around the corner? Money talks

3. Competent auditors cost more than trainees. Audit days are short and capacity planning becomes an issue. You cant have auditors swanning around the office with nothing to do. And you cant have competent auditors available at a touch of a button withought paying. There is no free lunch.
4. As volumes grow so do costs. After all this is not what can be called a scalable business. It is better to deliver volume than satisfaction, and so on. After all if the customer complains it will be to the sales people and not to auditor or planning process. Only when volumes drop or the ” marlet objectives” are not met will any of these issues be eventually discussed

Again, who audits these CB internal objectives, results? Have they actually ever worked in a CB? Are the “controls” necessary in place and effective?

Competent audits – what is a good audit and who determines that? Clause 7.5.2 and IAF auditors group july 2005 post on this 9001 clause for service delivery. see http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/4298366/APG-AuditingServiceOrganizations.doc?func=doc.Fetch&nodeid=4298366 for auditing service organizations.

Those processes that involve real time delivery, and are carried out directly at the organization/customer interface can rarely (if ever) have their output verified by subsequent monitoring or measurement before they are delivered to the customer. Therefore, such processes are indeed subject to validation according to the requirements of ISO 9001, clause 7.5.2. This is also essential in order to prevent nonconformities from occurring

In order to ensure adequate control over the quality of the service to be provided, the auditor should:

• understand the service characteristics, the service provision processes, and their acceptance criteria, as defined by the organization (this should be done during the Stage 1 audit)
• determine whether validation of “real-time” service provision processes (or any other process that requires validation) has been performed and if this has taken into account the associated risks;
• assess if the appropriate tools, training and empowerment have been provided to the personnel involved.

For many service industries, the service provided is instantaneous (i.e. via “real- time” processes), which does not readily allow for inspection before delivery of that service. Quality thinking says that the most cost-effective way of doing business is to apply the philosophy of “special processes to ALL processes: the more the organization gets its processes right, the less the organization needs to worry about the outcome of their processes. Therefore it is very unlikely that this clause can be excluded

John”

Inspection & surveillance ain't what it used to be