Many years ago, I wrote how members of TC 176 were cashing in early on their work to write the ISO 9001:2015 version. Back in those days, over ten years ago now, we saw former TC 176 Chair Jack West and his 1,000-year-0ld buddy Charles Cianfrani give thousand-dollar seminars on clauses like “innovation” which never actually appeared in the standard. Those two shitbirds then published an entire book on the resulting DIS, which made no goddamned sense since the standard was edited about two months after their book was published.

West’s protege, Lorri Hunt, tried to cash in by selling seminars on the DIS and upcoming changes, as did other TC 176 leaders like Paul Palmes and Jose Dominguez. But in each case, they waited until the DIS was out to start their shameless shilling. This time around, the TC 176’ers are not even waiting.

I reported that back in February of 2024, Hunt and her scammy ISO 9000 World Conference pals began selling exorbitant tickets to an event where they claimed they would “separate the facts from fiction” on the pending ISO 9001 update. Yes, because not even the Committee Draft had been written at that time, it meant that everything Hunt and her pals were talking about were fiction. Nearly everyone who appeared on that panel no longer has any role in TC 176, having either quit or been tossed out. They didn’t have any idea what they were talking about then, and they certainly don’t now.

Now, Quality Digest magazine has seen fit to cash in, too, even though the DIS has not been published yet. On July 30, QD is hosting a webinar (sponsored by ComplianceQuest) called “Quality in Transition: An ISO Expert’s Guide” under the tagline, “Major updates are on the horizon for ISO 9000 and ISO 9001…are you ready?”  The webinar promises to go over “what’s driving the revisions to ISO 9001 and what changes are being considered” and “how organizations can begin preparing now for the 2025–2027 updates.”

The discussion is given by general nobody Mark Swanson — seriously, have you ever heard of this guy? — who runs a consulting company called QRx Partners out of Minnesota. (Their webpage is so bad, it never actually says what QRx actually does, other than give webinars.) He has been busy on YouTube using his role at TC 176 to pretend he knows what he is talking about, and you can see him here insisting that the new draft will include “user feedback” related to “technology, circular economy, and customer experience” — none of which actually appears in the current DIS.

Now he’s cashing in further, doing the webinar with Quality Digest and trying to brand himself as, I guess, the guy on TC 176 who will actively leak information in violation of all their rules on social media use or something. Anyway, given how little he seems to know about what is actually in the text submitted for DIS consideration, I don’t think he actually attends meetings and is relying on the notification emails that go out to TC 176 members. I expect him to be ejected in a few months.

Oh, did you notice that bit about “preparing now for the 2025–2027 updates” reference there? Even they don’t think they will get this published in 2026 as they have claimed. That’s the first time anyone has leaked this may dip into 2027, which I’ve been saying all along.

Anyway, congratulations, Mark Swanson and QRx Partners. You have proven once again that the consultant-led conflicts of interest are alive and well at TC 176, and we can only expect ISO 9001:202whatever to be worse, and not better, than the current version. Which, given how bad the 2015 edition is, is saying something.

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