by Christopher Paris | Aug 8, 2018 | Opinion |
Meet the “9001 Council.” I put that in ironic quotes because it doesn’t appear that the organization actually exists in any formal way, other than as a website. It doesn’t list any actual humans behind it, masks its website domain registration...
by Christopher Paris | Aug 4, 2018 | Opinion |
NASA has announced the names of the astronauts chosen to fly in the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and Boeing’s Starliner, and the list includes Sunita Williams. Williams will be on team Boeing, but she had previously operated the International Space Station robotic...
by Christopher Paris | Aug 1, 2018 | Opinion |
Quick hit: I urge those who are tasked with writing ISO 9001 procedures or quality system documentation to read this excellent article by Mark Nichol of Daily Writing Tips. I’ll forgive the site for using a number in the headline, making it look click-baity,...
by Christopher Paris | Jul 27, 2018 | Humor, Opinion |
I’ve completed the presentation materials for a short, 45-minute ASQ dinner presentation entitled “Three Steps ASQ Must Take To Become A Member-Focused Organization,” so am inviting one plucky ASQ Section to dare the Milwaukee HQ and book it. My...
by Christopher Paris | Jul 13, 2018 | Best Of, Opinion |
[The following is a full sample chapter from my book Surviving ISO 9001:2015. It discusses how ISO mutated the definition of the word “consensus” so that it actually means the opposite of the common meaning, in order to ensure it can publish standards...
by Christopher Paris | Jul 9, 2018 | Opinion |
The IAF just released an update to its Mandatory Document # 4 (“MD4”), entitled “The Use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) For Auditing / Assessment Purposes.” You can download that mouthful here. Essentially, the IAF’s...
by Christopher Paris | Jul 4, 2018 | Opinion |
Recently it was learned that Sheronda Jeffries, a rising star in the ISO 9001 scene and an influential member of the US TAG to TC 176 which authors the ISO 9000 series of standards, had polled members of her other organization, the Telecommunications Industry of...
by Christopher Paris | Jul 3, 2018 | Opinion |
ISO consultant and previous ASQ Quality Press author Milt Dentch has released a white paper called “The Negative Impact of Annex SL on ISO Management Systems Standards,” and it’s a remarkable read. You can download the PDF file here. Dentch is the...
by Christopher Paris | Jun 20, 2018 | Opinion |
ASQ is trying (again) to get a discussion forum board running on its website. Only members can post, but everyone can read it, and right now there’s a fairly remarkable exchange going on since early May launched by member Doug Sadtler. The discussion was over...
by Christopher Paris | Jun 7, 2018 | Opinion |
The outcome on this was expected, but at least now it’s official. Despite the World Trade Organization developing international regulations governing trade, the WTO actually has no mechanism to enforce those regulations when violations are carried out by an...
by Christopher Paris | Jun 6, 2018 | Opinion |
It only took a few days for plucky O-Fans and ASQ members to nominate me for the upcoming Crosby Medal, awarded to distinguished authors of a book on quality assurance. As I wrote then, there’s no chance I’m going to win — ASQ is trying to come up...
by Christopher Paris | Jun 5, 2018 | Opinion |
File this in the ever-expanding “Do As I Say, Not As I Do” section of your registrar irony file drawer. Alcumus, the mother company for registrar ISOQAR (UK) whose tagline is “Your Trusted Partner,” has admitted that it was inadvertently...
by Christopher Paris | May 29, 2018 | Humor, Opinion |
ASQ is holding their annual Crosby Medal nomination award, and is soliciting nominations for finalists. The Crosby Medal “is presented to the author(s) of a distinguished book that contributes to quality management.” I think that Surviving ISO 9001:2015...
by Christopher Paris | May 29, 2018 | Opinion |
Meet Jeroen Vanlerberghe of Belgium. He’s a “Senior Expert Management Standards and Systems” at the Bureau voor Normalisatie, the official Belgian standards body. Prior to becoming an “expert” on standards, he worked as a Business...
by Christopher Paris | May 28, 2018 | Opinion |
If you were to read the history books — and ones that don’t go back particularly far — you’d find out that China is the enemy of the United States. We fought multiple wars to keep the Chinese communist expansion from bulging ever further...
by Christopher Paris | May 26, 2018 | Opinion |
ISO has released a survey for members only — specifically management system Technical Committees that draft management system standards like ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 — asking about their experiences with Annex SL and the “high level structure”...
by Christopher Paris | May 23, 2018 | Humor |
“Peter W,” the un-powered human sidekick of superhero Deadpool in the latest movie Deadpool 2 is totally trolling LinkedIn, and the motivational message obsessed goons on that social network don’t even notice. It’s mind-blowing. In the move,...
by Christopher Paris | May 18, 2018 | Opinion |
It’s probably not a shocking headline but back in 2014, Boeing’s Tim Lee, he of the IAQG’s Registration Management Committee (RMC), just “went there” and referred to unaccredited AS9100 certificates as “bogus,”...
by Christopher Paris | May 15, 2018 | Opinion |
As has been reported here for some time, the leadership of the US Technical Advisory Group to ISO TC 176, the official group that develops the US drafts of the ISO 9000 family of standards, is comprised largely of private consultants to benefit financially from making...
by Christopher Paris | May 15, 2018 | Opinion |
I forget just how I came across the gem “4 to 10: Confessions of a Management Representative” by Deepu Krishnan, but I am glad I did. I downloaded it some time ago, and just got around to reading it. I’ve discovered this light, easy read is one of...
by Christopher Paris | May 14, 2018 | News |
I hadn’t made a decision when I published the press releases announcing my next book, Surviving AS9100 Rev. D, but have since firmed up the final book outline. Yes, the book will contain entire sections on implementing AS9110 Rev. C for aircraft repair stations...
by Christopher Paris | May 10, 2018 | Opinion |
Meet Scott Morrison of Elizabethtown KY, a Lead Auditor with the registrar SAI Global. Morrison has a problem with Oxebridge, and out of the blue he felt it was necessary to lay it all down. Mind you, I have no idea who he is, never heard of him, and can’t find...
by Christopher Paris | May 10, 2018 | News |
Yes, true believers, it’s true. I’ve been secretly working on my next bestseller, Surviving AS9100 Rev. D: How To Implement the Aerospace Quality Management System Standard Without Crashing Into Anything. And just as we did with my last book, Surviving ISO...
by Christopher Paris | May 9, 2018 | Humor |
This is Part IV of our ongoing series where we look back at some recent editorial graphics that ran alongside Oxebridge posts. See Part I of this series here, Part II here and Part III here. Those Bloody Bastards This graphic, erm, graphic was cut from an article on...
by Christopher Paris | May 8, 2018 | Opinion |
The Daryl Guberman YouTube channel has grown to gargantuan proportions, not in actual views of any of his videos (which tend to average about 30 each), but in the massive quantity of videos published. To date, Daryl Guberman has published over 1,000 videos accusing...
by Christopher Paris | May 8, 2018 | Opinion |
As I have said before, there are generally two types of ISO auditors: the “tin badge sheriff” who intends on proving how smart he is by angrily demanding you rebuild your QMS to his liking upon (the empty) threat of decertification, and the “best...
by Christopher Paris | May 7, 2018 | Opinion |
ISO has struggled with process management for decades. Prior to the 2000 release of ISO 9001, critics chastised the standard for not adopting the process approach put forward by quality experts like Deming, Shewhart and Ishikawa, decades earlier. In 2000, ISO 9001...
by Christopher Paris | May 1, 2018 | Opinion |
I’m consistently confused by how the consultants in the quality management field consistently tie their business model to the whims and proclamations of ISO and its various attendants, such as the registrars and accreditation bodies. This makes no sense, and...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 29, 2018 | Opinion |
I’m reading through reams of legal filings in the Tsamota v. ANAB lawsuit, and it’s a treasure trove of nerdy, standards-wonk stuff placed into a courtroom setting. If you recall, Tsamota is suing ANAB for canceling its accreditation application process by...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 25, 2018 | Opinion |
I’ve written extensively about the “myth of the integrated management system,” or IMS. As I wrote in my book Surviving ISO 9001:2015, the IMS was created by ISO in order to sell standards in bulk under the false premise that companies wanted to join...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 24, 2018 | Best Of, Guidance Document |
As written about a lot on this site, ISO 9001 and AS9100 auditors do an awful lot of consulting during audits, even though it’s prohibited; after all, the last time an industry tolerated consultants auditing their own work, we got the Enron scandal and...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 17, 2018 | Opinion |
The other day I wrote an article “Auditors Hide Consulting Under “Opportunity For Improvement Guise” and it got tremendous feedback. One reader from a large aerospace manufacturing firm wrote the following, and it’s republished with permission: I just had...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 12, 2018 | Opinion |
As you know, ISO 9001 and AS9100 certification body (CB) auditors are disallowed from providing consulting. This is to prevent conflicts of interest where the auditor then winds up assessing their own work; if you take their advice, they are more likely to grant you...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 12, 2018 | Opinion |
Here’s an interesting angle, prompted by my article the other day of how ISO 9001 and AS9100 registrars are ignoring major nonconformities now, to ensure they can get through the backlog of audits prompted by this ridiculous September 2018 transition deadline....
by Christopher Paris | Apr 7, 2018 | Opinion |
So, in their self-created, mad rush to get companies certified before a self-created mad September 2018 deadline, the world’s ISO 9001 and AS9100 registrars have come up with a new trick: ignore major nonconformities! In what is a disturbing trend, I am seeing...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 6, 2018 | Opinion |
Quick update for SAI Global clients. It seems their accreditation for ISO 9001 and some other standards was restored, but not for AS9100. But it’s murky, and I’m not entirely clear on it. Why? Because as usual, the ANAB website is a disaster. If you search...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 25, 2018 | Opinion |
As reported the other day, UKAS issued a bizarre “technical bulletin” allowing its accredited registrars to offer unaccredited certificates, even though that arrangement is a violation of ISO 17021, the accreditation rules. Even stranger, an email sent by...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 20, 2018 | Opinion |
[Updated below with UKAS response.] The other day I wrote that BSI had issued a certificate to ISO 45001, the new occupational safety and health standard, within minutes of the standard being released. That should be impossible, of course, under normal international...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 16, 2018 | Opinion |
When ISO 9001:2015 was released, BSI had already begun issuing certificates within hours of that release, defying all belief. This helped ensure that the world knew the entire certification scheme is a joke. BSI claimed they were able to do this because they had...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 13, 2018 | Opinion |
In the United States, “not-for-profit” organizations typically have to file their tax returns publicly. As a result, they are often easily retrieved, and have juicy nuggets of interesting information. The International Accreditation Forum (IAF) is a...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 8, 2018 | Opinion |
Here’s an interesting, if offbeat, little nugget. Many of the world’s ISO certification bodies (CBs) are borrowing each other’s Confidentiality Policies in order to get themselves accredited. That’s not illegal, and it’s probably not even...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 3, 2018 | Uncategorized |
There’s a grossly disingenuous marketing campaign by the likes of ASQ, AQI, and nearly every ISO 9001 and AS9100 registrar and consultant on the planet, who are telling you that you still have time to update your QMS to the latest versions of these standards....
by Christopher Paris | Mar 1, 2018 | Opinion |
In what’s becoming a growing series of articles, I have to yet again respond to an outrageous bullshit claim made on the internet by ASQ’s Bill Levinson. This time, Levinson is suggesting that Oxebridge is hypocritical in fighting against the unaccredited...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 1, 2018 | Opinion |
The failings of the IAF accreditation scheme, led largely by the accreditation bodies ANAB (USA), UKAS (UK) and SCC (Canada), are becoming more and more visible, prompted by reporting by not only this website, but others hoping to call government attention to the...
by Christopher Paris | Feb 23, 2018 | Opinion |
So, as I mentioned last week, SAI Global (formerly QMI) had its accreditation temporarily suspended by ANAB for AS9100, ISO 9001 and other certs. The information coming out of ANAB is near zero, while SAI is struggling to create a narrative to explain it, leaving...
by Christopher Paris | Feb 22, 2018 | Humor, Opinion |
Our industry is plagued with idiots and morons, but they only rarely get into a cage match and fight each other. So it’s fairly awesome to be able to find a head-to-head bout between certificate mill operator Daryl Guberman and IAQG dunce-in-residence and former...
by Christopher Paris | Feb 21, 2018 | Opinion |
This gets gruesome, so be warned. Pennsylvania ASQ Section 209 Chair Bill Levinson once posted a fantasy whereby he mused about murdering a 13-year old girl, a scenario which he framed as a lesson against terrorism. The post was originally made here, but you’ll...
by Christopher Paris | Feb 15, 2018 | Sticky, Uncategorized |
If you’re a reader of the Oxebridge website, you must be conflicted and possibly confused. If you’re new to the ISO 9001 or AS9100 scheme, and just found Oxebridge, then you’re probably wondering why a consultancy like Oxebridge would be consistently...
by Christopher Paris | Feb 15, 2018 | Opinion |
Quick hit: Kaspersky Labs, the antivirus software developer being investigated for using their software as a spying platform for the Russian intelligence agencies, is certified to ISO 9001 by BSI. Their certificate includes, of course, the logos of ANAB and IAF....
by Christopher Paris | Feb 15, 2018 | News, Opinion |
I can’t keep up with this, and none of it makes sense, but here’s SAI’s latest explanation of their ANAB suspension. It only discusses AS9100, but the ANAB suspension was slapped onto nearly all of their certifications, including vanilla ISO 9001,...
