The Role of International Accreditation in Management System Certification

There’s a lot below the surface of an ISO QMS certificate

Thu, 03/07/2024 - 12:02

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As of its 2022 ISO Survey, ISO reported that there were 2.4 million valid management system certificates issued to the 16 most critical standards. Their validity is determined by the fact that they are accredited by members of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) who are also participants in the IAF multilateral recognition arrangement (MLA). The IAF MLA is an agreement that holds IAF members accountable to special IAF assessments that reward an accreditation body—and all certificates that bear their accreditation mark—with an international recognition that all other members of the IAF must accept.

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Comments

Submitted by ChrisParis on Tue, 09/03/2024 - 08:17

You mean to say there are 2.4 million "management system" certificates, not "quality management system." Of the standards you listed, only ISO 9001, 13485 and 29001 are for quality management systems. I know editing is hard, Quality Digest, but maybe try?

As for the validity of IAF's data, it is still barely populated. IAF is not enforcing its claim that participating is "mandatory" nor does it have the legal standing to do so anyway. I did a check of twenty companies that hold valid certs and NONE appeared in CertSearch. These included certs issued by major CBs, such as BSI, Quality Austria, and LRQA.

Good catch on the "quality management system" vs "management system"

That error has now been fixed.

Thank you, but can we get honest reporting on the IAF CertSearch participation? The database is woefully underpopulated and IAF has no real authority to mandate participation anyway. The IAF is not in a position to tell the UK, for example, that UKAS is not a recognized accreditation body. Nor can it tell Germany that DAkkS is unrecognized, nor ANAB in the US. The ABs know this, and they do not enforce CertSearch participation. The only person repeatedly claiming this is Grant, here on QD, and any honest reporting on IAF is apparently not allowed in QD. I'll post a link here, but I realize it may get cut. The following shows a random search of 8 companies in CertSearch who announced ISO certification, but NONE of them appear in the database. The actual study was done with 25 companies, but I only ran 8 screenshots. The successful hit rate in CertSearch was 0 %.  QD should be reporting on this to push IAF to improve, rather than publishing fluff pieces that are misleading, at best.

https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/iaf-certsearch-is-an-absolute-mess/

 

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