ISO has had to issue “corrected” numbers on national ISO 9001 totals for countries such as Russia, Ukraine and others; of the million + total certificates reported, over 100,000 were determined to be “fake” and as many as 50,000 – 75,000 more are suspect.
And yet so far, China has remained without a single course correction in its data. This, despite rampant anecdotal evidence that suggests a huge portion of its ISO 9001 certificates are issued either by nonaccredited certification bodies, or by accredited Certification Bodies (CBs) who are simply issuing false certificates.
One such anecdote: in the past I sat on the Advisory Board of a small US-based CB (accredited by ANAB) which was attempting to broaden its base by opening an office in China. Within weeks of opening the Chines office, the US headquarters received checks for 700 ISO 9001 certificates. The Chinese office only had a handful of auditors, so the math was clearly not right. The US office quickly sent their president to China and confirmed that the Chinese office was issuing certificates to clients without even conducting audits. They did the right thing: they shut down the Chinese office, rejected all the Chinese certs, and reported the mess to ANAB. The fake certs never made it into the supply chain.
But that was 700 fake certs issued in just a month or two, and it was nearly 10 years ago. This certification body had corrected the problem immediately, but in the past 10 years can we be sure that every other CB has? How many others remain ignorant, either because they don’t do due diligence, or can’t say no to the flow of money coming from China?
The numbers coming out of China are too incredible not to demand some scrutiny. There are currently over 330,000 ISO 9001 certificates, representing over 30% of the entire world’s total. The numbers in China fall second only to the entire continent of Europe.
The problem: ISO has taken a position, driven largely by marketing, to use China as the evidence for its argument that ISO 9001 is still growing, when in nearly every other geographic region, certificate totals are dropping. The “China factor” has been parroted by ISO’s Secretary General, as well as multiple other spokesmen and supporters, as well as in the past two ISO Survey publications. This has created a condition where ISO has a vested interest in making sure that China’s numbers remain strong, or risk international embarrassment. It can’t push for any research into the phenomenon, because that might reveal that the numbers are the result of fake certificates, and force a correction in the data; the resulting shift would probably prove, once and for all, that ISO 9001 is on the decline all over the planet.
China’s government, meanwhile, also has a vested interest in inflating the numbers, to prove that its products rivals the best in the world, and that “Made in China” is no longer a term synonymous with cheap, poor quality products.
What should be done? ISO should put aside its need to spin the declining numbers of ISO 9001 certificates, and investigate. In the long run, this would help build confidence in ISO 9001 by showing it has teeth, even if this meant a temporary drop in world totals. It might even drive ISO to truly improve the ISO 9001 standard, rather than engage in decades of paragraph-shuffling. The current course by ISO is self-defeating, and only hastens the demise of ISO 9001’s validity in the world economy.
Graphic credit: MarkTanner.com, used with permission.
Christopher Paris is the founder and VP Operations of Oxebridge. He has over 35 years’ experience implementing ISO 9001 and AS9100 systems, and helps establish certification and accreditation bodies with the ISO 17000 series. He is a vocal advocate for the development and use of standards from the point of view of actual users. He is the writer and artist of THE AUDITOR comic strip, and is currently writing the DR. CUBA pulp novel series. Visit www.drcuba.world
