As mentioned previously, when the US TAG 176 leadership attempted to have me replaced as speaker at a high-profile speech on ISO 9001 at Fordham University, they sent the organizers a link to TAG-approved information on the standard. That page was bad enough, but the updated page is damning evidence of just how badly the US TAG leaders and consultants have completely taken over the publishing space re: ISO 9001, and how they abuse their positions in order to drive business to their consulting firms.
In the table below, the following legend applies:
The color to watch is green, which would represent material written by actual ISO 9001 end users, who have no profit motive to produce their content, vs. the other three colors which represent various permutations of the TAG member / consultant community.
Here’s what the page looks like when mapped by author (click to embiggen):
Yes, the mass of yellow spaghetti shows just how much influence the TAG leadership applies on ASQ when promoting anything related to ISO 9001. Remember, the yellow means they are consultants and TAG members.
It gets worse. See the “more” link under the “Books” offerings? Clicking to that page is even more troubling: it offers a staggering catalog of 61 publications, which break down as follows:
As we can see, TAG leaders Charles Cianfrani, Jack West and JP Russell are the big winners here, collectively representing over a third (35%) of all publications promoted by the TAG itself. (This hints as to why Craig Williams is likely to be the next TAG Chair: he was nominated by West, and the nomination was upheld by the Nominating Committee comprised of Cianfrani and Russell.)
Next we can see how the promoted publications break down by author type. Here we see that external consultants (not TAG members) comprised 48% of the author pool.
Nevertheless, the TAG/Consultant gang — who only comprised 23% of the author pool — racked up a whopping 53% of the published credits on the page. Some of this is due to (pardon the pun) tag-teaming as multiple TAG leaders author a single book, as typified by the decades-long pairing of West and Cianfrani.
All of this continues to provide more evidence that the TAG 176 is overrun with profiteering consultants who abuse their position in order to rake in dough for themselves and their private practices.
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
