by Christopher Paris | Jun 16, 2019 | Opinion
The folks at TexasQA have interviewed me for their popular QualityMatters podcast, and we chatted for about a half an hour about the various problems facing the ISO 9001 certification scheme, as the shadiness of some of the auditors, certification bodies and...
by Christopher Paris | Jun 11, 2019 | Opinion
The International Accreditation Forum (IAF) has updated its “Mandatory Document # 5” — called MD5 colloquially — which defines the minimum number of audit days expected for ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 management system audits. Despite...
by Christopher Paris | Jun 11, 2019 | Opinion
Quick hit: I’m quoted in this piece by Dr. James Kline on the dubious sale of ISO 31000 certificates and the trending decline in overall ISO certs worldwide. Full disclosure: I’ve criticized Greg Hutchins, the blog’s owner, for cynically selling his...
by Christopher Paris | Jun 11, 2019 | Opinion
It took long enough, but the FAA has finally issued an airworthiness directive (AD) warning the aviation industry about the potentially defective slat tracks installed on some Boeing 737 aircraft. Boeing announced the problem over a week ago, and the FAA remained...
by Christopher Paris | Jun 11, 2019 | Opinion
It took only 24 hours from my last post (“IAF CertSearch Database of ISO Certificates Goes Live, and It’s a Mess”) before the IAF had to shut down their new website featuring a “global” database of ISO certificates. It seems that other than the...
by Christopher Paris | Jun 8, 2019 | Opinion
The IAF has released its “CertSearch” database website, allowing users to search and verify ISO 9001 and other certificates. The site is the culmination of a few years of work by IAF, after decades of attempts by various other bodies to present a single,...
by Christopher Paris | Jun 7, 2019 | Opinion
Within the last week, Boeing announced that a number of 737MAX and 737 NG airplanes are currently in operation with potentially defective components known as “slat tracks,” which help control the forward flight surfaces on the aircrafts’ wings. The...
by Christopher Paris | Jun 5, 2019 | Opinion
Meet Globus Certifications, a Pakistan-based ISO 9001 registrar that claims accreditation in the US by the International Accreditation Service (IAS), currently one of the only US-based competitors to ANAB. IAS is facing criticism for opening the US market to a flood...
by Christopher Paris | May 18, 2019 | Opinion, Uncategorized
We reported earlier that SAPA Extrusions, since reformed as Hydro Extrusions, was responsible for over a decade of aluminum test data falsification that was later proven to be responsible for the loss of two NASA rocket missions, costing taxpayers $700 million. News...
by Christopher Paris | May 15, 2019 | Opinion
I’m happy, if exhausted, to announce that my next book Surviving AS9100 Rev. D is now at the printers, and being prepped for simultaneous publication as a hardcopy paperback edition as well as a tablet-ready e-book. I’d like to thank all those that bought...
by Christopher Paris | May 14, 2019 | Opinion
As you know, ISO is on a worldwide campaign to convince everyone in the world that their dictionaries are wrong, and that risk can be positive. They are not confusing accidentally-beneficial side effects of risk as being positive, but saying outright that risk is a...
by Christopher Paris | May 8, 2019 | Opinion
A handy source just provided me the official ballot from TC 176 on the changes to the definition of “risk” for what was previously called Annex SL (now just Annex L.) You may want to read yesterday’s article first, on why this whole thing is so...
by Christopher Paris | May 7, 2019 | Opinion
Comes now the information from Dolf van der Haven that the controversial Annex SL was renamed as “Annex L.” This, you may recall, is the mandatory “high-level structure” ruleset published by ISO for which all management system standards (MSS)...
by Christopher Paris | May 5, 2019 | Opinion
As you know, ISO is dead-set on doubling-down on its mistakes, and is revising the much-loathed Annex SL. ISO and its attendant cronies are actively rejecting any argument that Annex SL is the core problem affecting ISO 9001:2015, which requires them to then ignore...
by Christopher Paris | May 2, 2019 | Opinion
Poor Quality Magazine. Like its brethren Quality Progress and Quality Digest, it just can’t seem to stop stepping on its own feet when it comes to bad reporting, conflicted advertiser promotions and other journalistic cock-ups. Now it comes to light that in...
by Christopher Paris | May 2, 2019 | Opinion
I saw the IAQG OASIS website was down for maintenance, so I poked around the site’s source code and found a line of code that was remmed out, meaning it was intentionally turned off. That line referenced a Wichita State University “AuditCalc”...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 29, 2019 | Opinion
It’s consistently stunning just how powerless and sycophantic the world’s Accreditation Body community is, led by the IAF (International Accreditation Forum) and its sister regional organization EA (European Accreditation). Together with the ISO committee,...
by Christopher Paris | Apr 26, 2019 | News
Nicole Baldridge, of Baldridge Consulting (not related to Oxebridge except through rhyme), is offering companies a free review of their third-party ISO 9001 audit reports. This means the CB report and its findings, not your internal audits. Posting on LinkedIn, Ms....
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...
