Thanks to my prior reporting, ANAB appears to have told their marketing geniuses to stop saying their accreditation “ensures” stuff. But now the caffeine in their Keurig pods seems to have affected another part of their brains.

ANAB is aggressively marketing “completely custom” and “tailored” private training, on specific issues and topics covered under their various accreditation activities. Here’s a LinkedIn post from today:

And have a look at this screenshot from their website, as of today:

The language is pretty darn explicit. ANAB says they “tailor courses specifically to the training needs of organizations requesting training” and then add, just for good measure, they go full crackhead:

ANAB also offers completely custom courses on conformity assessment standards and related topics, such as AOAC requirements in the laboratory or improving your internal auditing skills.

But remember that ANAB claims to abide by ISO 17011, the standard for accreditation bodies, and that it undergoes peer evaluation by the IAF and its regional bodies , like IAAC and EA, to ensure that compliance. So what does ISO 17011 say about all this?

4.4.11 The accreditation body and any part of the same legal entity shall not offer or provide any service
that affects its impartiality, such as: … (b) consultancy.

The standard then defines “consultancy” as:

Participation in any of the activities of a conformity assessment body subject to accreditation.

EXAMPLE 3 Giving specific advice or specific training towards the development and implementation

It then allows training by ABs, but only under certain strict conditions:

… arranging and participating as a lecturer in training, orientation or educational courses, provided that these courses confine themselves to the provision of generic information that is freely available in the public domain, i.e. they cannot provide specific solutions to a conformity assessment body in relation to the activities of that organization.

So it seems pretty damn clear ANAB is in full violation of this, as they are overtly offering “tailored” training to clients of their accreditation services, about their accreditation services.  For example, ANAB teaching its clients how to conduct “internal auditing” would be a violation because, later, ANAB is going to audit those clients’ internal auditing programs. ANAB can write an NC on auditor performance which would conveniently be resolved if the client then bought ANAB’s training classes. Ka-ching!

Likewise, “AOAC” is a specific scheme related to ANAB’s ISO 17025 accreditation services, specific for food testing labs… who ANAB accredits.

If this sounds like a gross conflict of interest, it is. In fact, the reason ANAB exists is because they were forced to stop this nonsense decades ago. Previously, ANAB was known as “RAB” (Registrar Accreditation Board) and offered training for ISO 9001 auditors. The world balked at this, since RAB was in a position to write up auditors for poor performance, forcing them to take RAB courses in order to close the nonconformities. RAB was split into two organizations: RABQSA (the auditor certification company, which is now called Exemplar) and ANAB (the accreditation body.)

But since then, ANAB has essentially taken over the IAF, which is supposed to oversee them, so no longer gives a single shit about conforming to ISO 17011. I mean, what is IAF gonna do?

So, yes, ANAB can now come into your organization and write you up for stuff that can magically be solved if you give ANAB more money for their training courses.

And the IAF is totally cool with this.

I’ll probably file a complaint on this, but ANAB is already processing last week’s complaint about their other ISO 17011 violation related to marketing Ideagen.

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