The IAQG does not care, since it views itself as the customer of AS9100, but the decision to rebrand the standard to “IA9100” is about to cause a financial wreck for thousands of companies. And we can point to a similar move by ISO in the late 2000s as proof.
Back in 2005, ISO held a vote to see if ISO 9001:2000 needed to be updated. The majority of nations voted against a revision, but ISO — knowing that ISO 9001 is its flagship product, and they stood to make a lot of money if they updated it — pushed ahead anyway. They released ISO 9001:2008 as an “amendment,” rather than a revision, with the biggest change being the new date on the cover. Then, in what was likely full-on fraud, ISO partnered with the IAF to enforce a three-year certification sunset rule, forcing anyone certified to ISO 9001:2000 to update their systems and certifications to ISO 9001:2008, despite the fact that the standard had no new requirements.
Dutifully, certification bodies like SGS and NQA went around writing nonconformities, and threatening to de-certify any company that hadn’t bought a copy of ISO 9001:2008, and updated their documentation to read “2008” instead of “2000.” Here is one such nonconformity written by SGS auditor Ernest Blanchard, who was ballsy enough to invoke ANAB in his writeup:
ANAB, of course, upheld the issue, ignoring the fact that the 2008 version had, per ISO’s own admission, no new requirements, so referencing the year of the standard in a management review meeting was entirely moot. Let’s not even get into the fact that no ISO 9001 version ever required a company to reference “ISO 9001” at all in management review records.
SGS may have won, but they then lost a healthy number of Oxebridge clients, and were permanently put on our list of CBs to avoid, so congrats to them for that.
Armed with grifty-smelling positions from IAF and ANAB, the certification bodies forced companies to spend money updating documents simply to remove references to “2000” and swap in the year “2008.” It was ludicrous.
IAQG: Let’s Piss Off Everyone, Too!
The IAQG is on the same track with its rebranding of AS9100 to “IA9100.” While the pending initial release of the new IA9100 standard is likely to have new requirements, if it only had new requirements, that would be manageable. Companies could update select documents to address only those new bits.
Because of the entire rebranding, however, companies are going to have to update documents that are not affected by the new requirements, wherever and whenever they reference “AS9100.” Worse, companies will have to update their marketing materials, websites, proposal documentation, and anywhere the term is called out at all.
And for what, exactly? It’s not clear at all what the rebranding brings to the table other than complete confusion. (Already, I have clients who say the standard sounds like an “internal audit” standard, due to the “IA” branding.) But the Europeans thought this was important for some unknown reason. Thanks, France, you dick.
Will aerospace certification bodies check this? Of course they will, no doubt by making the argument that you cannot claim conformity to IA9100 if you are still calling it AS9100.
for some companies, third-party search-and-replace software might help ease the burden of mass-updating procedures, but this does introduce potential problems related to revision control. Technically, it’s not sufficient only to swap out “AS9100” for “IA9100,” but also to increment the revision of the updated documents and show approval for them. Software can’t do that automatically.
A company could, however, insert language into their Quality Manual that says something like the following:
As of this writing, AS9100 is undergoing rebranding to “IA9100,” but that naming has not been formally approved yet. Once that happens, it should be understood that any legacy reference to “AS9100” shall be interpreted as meaning “IA9100.”
Where documents are updated only to replace the branding of AS9100 with IA9100, it is not necessary to increment the documents’ revision level or show specific approval of the change.
That should alleviate any issues with auditors, unless they are simply on the warpath.
Will an airplane crash if your procedure calls out AS9100 instead of IA9100? Of course not, but AS auditors are not here to ensure the safety of aircraft. They are here to punch their time card and make it look like they are doing something other than eating your donuts.
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
