{"id":2288,"date":"2014-01-26T16:37:35","date_gmt":"2014-01-26T20:37:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/?p=2288"},"modified":"2014-01-28T13:16:22","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T17:16:22","slug":"lrqa-granted-iso-9001-certificate-to-a-company-it-never-audited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/lrqa-granted-iso-9001-certificate-to-a-company-it-never-audited\/","title":{"rendered":"LRQA Responds to Official Complaint With Lawsuit Threat"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Earlier this month, we reported a story entitled “LRQA Granted ISO 9001 Certificate to Company It Never Audited.” We followed this up with a formal complaint to LRQA on the matter. LRQA responded to Oxebridge by threatening a lawsuit on the grounds of libel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prior to the original article, Oxebridge was contacted by a customer of the company Hoerbiger Kompressortechnik, who revealed that a certificate bearing the LRQA logo (see right) had been submitted to his company, by Hoerbiger Hungary, in order to gain a contract. This representative — who, to date, has asked to remain anonymous — researched the certificate and found that the company was not, in fact, certified.<\/p>\n

The customer provided us emails between himself and LRQA’s Central Europe Area Manager\u00a0Bjoern Mueller which seemed to confirm the story that LRQA had issued the certificate. \u00a0On November 3, Mr. Mueller responded:<\/span><\/p>\n

All LRQA certificates are issued in line with company procedures, which have been independently audited and accredited by\u00a0 over 50 accreditation bodies around the world.\u00a0 Also, our investigations into this incident are based on the processes that have been sanctioned by these accreditation bodies, in line with ISO 17021.<\/p>\n

On September 3rd<\/sup>, we responded to your initial concerns by confirming that the ISO 9001 certificate in question relative to Hoerbiger Hungary Kft was not a valid LRQA certificate.\u00a0 In parallel, we had informed the headquarters of our client Hoerbiger of this situation. Following their own internal investigation, Hoerbiger requested that LRQA undertook an ISO 9001 assessment at Hoerbiger Hungary Kft to ensure this particular site\u2019s compliance with international quality management system ISO 9001.\u00a0 This process has been completed and their certificate is now valid along with the other Hoerbiger sites.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(ISO 17021:2011 is the international accreditation standard under which LRQA is accredited, and which provides the rules for conducting 3rd party conformity assessment to ISO 9001. Under that standard, audits are required before any ISO 9001 certificate can be issued. )<\/p>\n

Based on that email, we assumed the following was true:<\/p>\n