Representatives of both the Japan Accreditation\u00a0Board (JAB) and the International Accreditation\u00a0Forum (IAF) have refused to respond to queries regarding the growing scandals related to Japanese companies falsifiying product testing data, which has resulted in nonconforming product and materials being used in the manufacture of aircraft and automobiles, among other end uses.<\/p>\n
Japanese companies have been exposed as having falsified test data to allow defective products to bypass quality controls, with the Japanese steel and metals industries being the main perpetrators. In nearly every case, the Japanese company reported to have engaged in the illegal practices was certified by a Japanese ISO 9001 certification body which was then accredited by JAB, under rules monitored by the IAF.<\/p>\n
The companies include Koyo Seiki,\u00a0NGK Insulators,\u00a0Nakayama Steel Works,\u00a0Mitsubishi Aluminum Co.,\u00a0Kobe Steel,\u00a0Hitachi Chemical,\u00a0Mitsubishi Cable Industries,\u00a0Mitsubishi Shindoh Co.,\u00a0Toray Hybrid Cord,\u00a0Asahi Kasei and\u00a0Kubota Corp. The companies all received ISO 9001 certification from one of four Japanese CBs: JIC Quality Assurance,\u00a0Japanese Standards Association,\u00a0Japan Quality Assurance Organization, or Japan Chemical Quality Assurance. All four of those companies are accredited by JAB.<\/p>\n
Oxebridge has contacted multiple senior executives with JAB, including Shinjiro Fujimaki, Kishino Fuminori, Yoshinobu Uemasiu and Masahiko Murakawa. In addition, the IAF was contacted. None have replied, despite evidence of the contact having been received.<\/p>\n
Only in some of the cases were the certificates\u00a0suspended temporarily, and only after the scandals were reported in mainstream industry press. In other cases, the certificates have remained in effect, despite the scandals.<\/p>\n
The pattern of scandals has impacted on Japanese manufacturing and the Japanese economy, and resulted in arrests and losses in the billions of dollars for individual companies.<\/p>\n
The ISO certificates issued by the CBs\u00a0under\u00a0the JAB logo claim the companies fully comply with ISO 9001, which requires that inspection data be accurate. It is therefore not possible that the companies could maintain ISO 9001 certification under such conditions.<\/p>\n
JAB is paid by the CBs it accredits, and de-accrediting any single CB would result in a large loss of annual revenue for the accreditation body. Likewise, the CBs are paid by clients like Kobe Steel, reducing the incentive to de-certify them even when found engaged in criminal activities.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Officials from JAB and IAF have refused to answer questions related to their role in Japan’s increasing data falsification scandals.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":644,"featured_media":16531,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[61,931,83,43,14,681,679,926,930,929,928,927,665],"class_list":["post-16661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-accreditation-bodies","tag-certificaton-bodies","tag-iaf","tag-iso","tag-iso-9001","tag-jab","tag-japan","tag-japan-accreditation-board","tag-japan-chemical-quality-assurance","tag-japan-quality-assurance-organization","tag-japanese-standards-association","tag-jic-quality-assurance","tag-kobe-steel","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/644"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16752,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16661\/revisions\/16752"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}