by Christopher Paris | Apr 21, 2019 | Opinion
As mentioned earlier, Paul Palmes stepped down as Chair of the US TAG to ISO TC 176 — the group that represents the US for the ISO 9000 family of standards — and was replaced by Alan Daniels from Boeing. The three prior TAG Chairs — Jack West, Alka...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 19, 2019 | Guidance Document, News
As announced last week, the surprise Second Edition of Surviving ISO 9001:2015 has been released. There was a slight glitch, however, as Amazon only released the new paperback edition, and didn’t make the Kindle (ebook) edition available. That’s been fixed...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 10, 2019 | Opinion, Services
While it’s increasingly rare, some companies have found themselves unceremoniously dropped from the AS9100 guest list, with their certification suspended. The most common reason for this is a failure to address nonconformities within the mandated response time,...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 9, 2019 | Opinion
Back in March of 2018, I reported that BSI had issued a certificate to ISO 45001, the new occupational safety and health standard, within minutes of the standard’s release. “That should be impossible, of course, under normal international accreditation...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 4, 2019 | News
Well, that was quick. Just yesterday I teased the release of the Second Edition of Surviving ISO 9001:2015, What Went So Wrong with the World’s Foremost Quality Management Standard and How to Implement It Anyway, and now it’s already available on Amazon. This...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 4, 2019 | Opinion
First, remember that I don’t sell ITAR consulting services, so I have no profit to gain from causing a panic in this area. But, as I warned before, if you’re working in aerospace or doing any machining whatsoever with defense, aviation or aerospace...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 3, 2019 | News
The only thing that’s generated more mail than our April Fool’s Day report on Oxebridge shutting down has been anxious aerospacers demanding to know when my next book, Surviving AS9100 Rev. D, is coming out. After all, it’s many months late. The good...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 1, 2019 | Opinion
The IAF has released a beta website for its coming international ISO certificate database, called CertSearch. The early code and site layout give us some hints as to what IAF has planned, and nearly every possible consideration of the project appears to suggest...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 27, 2019 | Opinion
As I wrote earlier, the certification body Bureau Veritas has been marketing itself as being ISO 9001 certified for years, and slathering said mark on every page of its website, even for services that were not included in the scope of certification. This has...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 27, 2019 | Opinion
File this in the “ANAB – Oversight Activities – Clueless” drawer. For years, the ANAB-accredited registrar Bureau Veritas has held an ISO 9001 certificate of its own, issued by ANAB-accredited registrar BSI. And there’s a problem. We...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 19, 2019 | Humor, Opinion
BNP Media’s Quality Magazine is ostensibly a competitor to ASQ’s Quality Progress, but the two companies share some activities, and at least one ASQ member is on Quality Magazine’s “Executive Committee.” ASQ is also listed as a...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 18, 2019 | Opinion
So, a common refrain from TC 176 representatives is that they are “volunteers,” and thus deserve nothing but our respect and admiration. If they create a standard that invents crazy-ass nonsense from out of thin air (“risk-based thinking!”) or...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 18, 2019 | Opinion
O-Fans know I’m working hard on connecting the dots between recent disasters and scandals, and the ISO and AS certification schemes. Many readers have written in asking about whether AS9100 is at the heart of Boeing’s recent troubles, namely a one-two...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 15, 2019 | Opinion
If you haven’t heard, ASQ has dropped “American” from its name, opting to re-brand as simply “ASQ” with it no longer standing for “American Society for Quality.” The ASQ website is undergoing a scrubbing to remove all...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 15, 2019 | Guidance Document
Something went down at IAQG and or ANAB, because a recent spate of nonconformities issued to AS9100 users shows that certification body auditors are hammering hard on the clauses related to purchase order (PO) flowdowns. In only the past two months, Oxebridge clients...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 13, 2019 | Opinion
Meet Dr. Mark Berman of California. The plucky surgeon had already run into trouble with the FDA and US Dept. of Justice for “allegedly offering unproven stem cell treatments,” and now he finds himself the recipient of an official FDA warning letter for...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 13, 2019 | Opinion
Seems the American Society for Quality hasn’t quite figured out that whole “quality” thing yet, despite claiming to be the world’s authority on it. Put your meta-irony shields up for this one. One ASQ member reported that the ASQ’s...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 10, 2019 | Opinion
It’s very early days yet, but as news comes in of the massive hack of Citrix data, allegedly conducted by bad actors from Iran, the role of ISO 27001 is falling under scrutiny. ISO 27001 is the ISO standard that alleges to provide controls to prevent such...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 10, 2019 | Opinion
Hardly a week goes by without more evidence that the third-party certification scheme has been corrupted to the point of criminality, even as its overseers ignore the problem entirely. Now over 180 people have died from a deadly mudslide which caused a faulty...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 7, 2019 | Opinion
As word comes in that consultants in the US are now using the Oxebridge Totally Free QMS Documentation Template Kit in their practices, it falls on me to start publishing articles stating the really, really obvious. No, they can’t do this. The problem has...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 6, 2019 | Guidance Document
One of the most common internal audit nonconformities is related to discovering that employees are not following a published procedure, or that the procedure no longer matches current practice. What’s astonishing is that while ISO 9001 and AS9100 require you to...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 6, 2019 | Opinion
Here’s a fun game. Go check your last ISO 9001 or AS9100 audit report — heck, this game works for TS 16949, ISO 13485, ISO 14001 and nearly every other management system audit — and look over the auditor’s “opportunities for...
by Christopher Paris | Mar 2, 2019 | Opinion
As reported a while back, the AS9100 certification body SAI Global (formerly QMI) had its accreditation lifted for many months by ANAB. This was stunning, because the average length of an ANAB accreditation suspension is measured in days or even hours, and SAI’s...
by Christopher Paris | Feb 14, 2019 | Opinion
For companies purchasing and utilizing electronic components, the firm ERAI is a mandatory resource for information on counterfeit products hitting the market. Recently, ERAI ran a blog post listing a host of websites known or suspected to be selling counterfeit...
by Christopher Paris | Feb 8, 2019 | News, Services
As ISO 9001 certification dies on the vine, the victim of an increasingly corrupt certification system and a decreasingly useful standard, companies are looking for alternatives. ISO 9001 was never intended to guarantee quality, sure, but the fact that illegal drug...
by Christopher Paris | Feb 2, 2019 | Opinion
Well, that was quick. Just hours after publishing an article on how US TAG 176 Chair Paul Palmes went AWOL, I learned that Boeing’s Alan Daniels was elected the new Chair, in a silent and very, very quiet election that no one outside of the TAG even knew...
by Christopher Paris | Feb 2, 2019 | Opinion
(UPDATE: I answered my own question, here. A new TAG Chair was elected, in secret.) Bear with me, because rather than report on a subject, I’m asking an honest answer. I invite anyone with insight to clarify things for me, to the extent that they can (write me...
by Christopher Paris | Feb 1, 2019 | Opinion
I’m not sure what’s worse, ASQ’s hamfisted efforts to get its members to side with China over the United States, or its public-facing bungling of its attempts to do so. A reader caught my article from two days ago on how ASQ’s new pro-China...
by Christopher Paris | Jan 31, 2019 | Opinion
ASQ has really dug in on its support of China, signaling the William Troy leadership era is likely to be marked by bad decisions backed by entrenched inflexibility. It’s not quite a good time to be promoting China, but Troy’s apparently hoping that...
by Christopher Paris | Jan 17, 2019 | Opinion
Smithers has pulled its “ISO 14001 Gap Analysis Tool” which featured just over half of the ISO 14001 standard, copied and pasted, with Smithers invoking copyright over the entire thing. That came within hours of my reporting on their copyright faux pas....
by Christopher Paris | Jan 16, 2019 | Opinion
The IAQG’s Buddy Cressionnie and Alan Daniels are busy booking appearances at the upcoming ISO 9000 Conference, but apparently can’t find the time to answer official questions regarding the AS9100 scheme inside the OASIS “Feedback” system. For...
by Christopher Paris | Jan 15, 2019 | Opinion
UPDATE see below. The registrar Smithers Quality Assessments (SQA) just published an ISO 14001 “gap analysis” tool that includes a massive portion of the ISO 14001:2015 standard itself, meaning you don’t have to actually buy the standard from ISO or...
by Christopher Paris | Jan 14, 2019 | Opinion
The website ISOUpdate.com claims to be an “independent website that aims to provide information, resources, and updates around the Standards and Certification industry,” but if you scratch the surface this doesn’t appear quite true. They popped up...
by Christopher Paris | Jan 9, 2019 | Opinion
UPDATE see below. The International Accreditation Forum (IAF) has released a survey asking respondents about their views on the IAF rules for minimum audit days. These rules, published in IAF “Mandatory Document Nr. 5” (MD5) affect all ISO management...
by Christopher Paris | Jan 6, 2019 | Humor
Oxebridge’s decidedly off-topic sister site, the irreverent wine blog Winepisser.com, has announced its fourth annual Winepisser Best Wine award. You can read which of 150 wines tasted in 2018 came in first, along with some runners-up. In keeping with a newer...
by Christopher Paris | Jan 5, 2019 | Opinion
The recent, and likely prolonged, shutdown of the US government by President Trump and a dysfunctional Congress will have an impact on companies certified to ISO 9001 and AS9100 in interesting ways. For a while I have criticized the ISO certification scheme for its...
by Christopher Paris | Dec 29, 2018 | Opinion
I reported on the fact that Ernst & Young’s financial auditors assessed systems and controls that had also been assessed by ISO 27001 auditors from another EY company, CertifyPoint. That article was then expanded in MarketWatch, who reached out to...
by Christopher Paris | Dec 26, 2018 | Opinion
UPDATED; see below. If you want to talk to a real person at the International Accreditation Forum (IAF), or even drop by their office, you’re going to find that difficult. They’ve scrubbed all evidence of any people who might be involved with the...
by Christopher Paris | Dec 18, 2018 | Opinion
I didn’t see this coming, but buried in a note from ASQ Section 1118 (Middle Tennessee) was this chilling nugget from Chair Doug Sadtler: As the Summer kicked off, ASQ introduced its new social community platform, myASQ. This new platform is designed to be the...
by Christopher Paris | Dec 10, 2018 | Opinion
Annex SL is ISO’s power-grab which strips away the ability of ISO member nations and subject matter experts to draft ISO standards, and hands that power back to the ISO headquarters through its Technical Management Board (TMB). Any ISO member committee that is...
by Christopher Paris | Dec 9, 2018 | Opinion
Today the people of Peru are voting on a dramatic, historic referendum to reshape a government wracked for decades with corruption, brought on by bribes from one company: Odebrecht. In what must be a world first, four ex-presidents are in various states of detention...
by Christopher Paris | Dec 8, 2018 | Opinion
Randox Testing Services is currently under criminal investigation for having falsified forensics testing data, resulting in criminal convictions based on those tests being overturned, and raising into question the results of paternity tests, drug tests, and other...
by Christopher Paris | Dec 8, 2018 | Opinion
The international Japanese news journal Japan Today is running my op-ed, “Japan’s Single Point of Failure in the Data Falsification Scandal.” Give it a click and feel free to post your comments. Join the O-Forum discussion on this post About...
by Christopher Paris | Dec 5, 2018 | News
FLIR Surveillance, Inc. was charged by the US Dept. of State with at least 347 separate violations of the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) and forced to pay a civil penalty of $30,000,000, in a span of breaches that reach back as far as 2008. The FLIR...
by Christopher Paris | Nov 30, 2018 | Opinion
You may remember UK consultant Craig Willetts, a British Daryl Guberman wannabe who uses a host of websites under a host of company names to simultaneously sell ISO 9001 consulting and certification. Mimicking Guberman nearly exactly, he has also published fake press...
by Christopher Paris | Nov 29, 2018 | Humor
With the retirement of President John Knappenberger and former VP Randy Dougherty in self-exile (he’s not quite quit yet, but is in deep hiding), the new ANAB organizational structure has embraced flatness. Still without a permanent replacement for...
by Christopher Paris | Nov 26, 2018 | Humor
Sigh, sometimes it’s so easy, you’d almost think someone on ISO Technical Committee 176 intentionally feeds me material. Recently, TC 176 held one of its tourist excursions plenary sessions, this time in the Azores, that island clutch located nearly a...
by Christopher Paris | Nov 24, 2018 | Humor, Satire
Not to be outdone by ASQ in the arena of craven capitulation, now the UK’s Chartered Quality Institute (CQI), which has its hooks in the British government, has given out a slew of quality awards to some very interesting folks. First up is the architect of...
by Christopher Paris | Nov 24, 2018 | Opinion
To add some data to what we already know, incoming TC 176/SC2 Chair Paul Simpson posted on LinkedIn that an internal survey revealed nearly half of the certification schemes Certification Bodies (CBs) and Accreditation Bodies (ABs) were unaware of auditing guidelines...
by Christopher Paris | Nov 20, 2018 | Opinion
Following up from our report the other day that the new ISO 19011 standard removed a long-standing requirement that demanded auditors “observe and comply with any applicable legal requirements,” — essentially giving CB auditors a “wink-wink,...
