{"id":5912,"date":"2015-08-14T12:58:18","date_gmt":"2015-08-14T17:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/?p=5912"},"modified":"2015-08-14T13:20:17","modified_gmt":"2015-08-14T18:20:17","slug":"anabs-appearance-at-sgs-event-is-toxic-to-its-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/anabs-appearance-at-sgs-event-is-toxic-to-its-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"ANAB’s Appearance at SGS Event is Toxic to its Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"anablovessgs\"As mentioned earlier<\/a>, ANAB CEO John Knappenberger is heading to Orlando to give a speech at an event on ISO 9001 and risk<\/a> hosted by one of its accredited certification bodies (CBs), SGS North America. My blog post yesterday was more snark than substance, and I have since taken a second look at the situation and found it needs a bit more serious teardown.<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s disappointing\u00a0that ANAB would jump into the “quality=risk” reboot of an entire profession, but the bigger problem is that as soon as Knappenberger steps onto the stage, he reveals to the entire world just how much ANAB has abdicated its responsibilities, abandoned its mission, and proven it’s just the cowering lapdog of its CB “customers.”<\/p>\n

For one,\u00a0SGS is paying for the stage. That immediately injects a financial and legal entanglement that ANAB should — above all — be seeking to avoid. It dilutes anyone’s reasonable expectation of objectivity and fairness if ANAB takes the financial favors of one of its clients, without doing the exact same thing for every single other CB it accredits, else it be\u00a0seen as playing favorites.<\/p>\n

So, good news, AMTec,<\/a> PRG<\/a> or other CB no one ever heard of: you can probably get Randy Dougherty to make balloon animals at your kid’s next birthday party.<\/p>\n

Since that’s not gonna happen, the overt favoritism also raises a valid question as to how anyone\u00a0could ever expect ANAB to hold SGS accountable to accreditation rules if they are “partners” in these kinds of marketing events.\u00a0Of course we already know ANAB has given SGS a free pass in the past<\/a>, so perhaps this explains the power that SGS’ Zach Pivarnik seemed to hold over ANAB.<\/p>\n

The ANAB-SGS lovefest may also be an overt violation of ISO 17011, under which ANAB alleges to operate. That standard demands that ANAB’s activities “do not compromise the\u00a0confidentiality, objectivity and impartiality of its accreditations.” So this favoritism — helping SGS in its marketing efforts, while not offering the same to other ANAB CBs — not only violates the spirit<\/em> of 17011, it may violate the letter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Certainly this appears true when looking at the introductory information in 17011, which summarizes nicely the entire purpose of ANAB’s (and all other AB’s) existence:<\/p>\n

It is important for the purchaser, regulator and the public to know that these [CBs] are competent to perform\u00a0their tasks. For that reason there is an increasing demand for impartial verification of their competence. Such\u00a0verification is done by authoritative accreditation bodies that are impartial in relation to both the [CBs] and\u00a0their clients….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So by jumping into the loving arms of SGS, ANAB creates an instant\u00a0mess, and the minute Knappenberger walks on the stage he announces\u00a0his deep conflict of interest for the world\u00a0to see, and pulls the curtain away from the Oz-like quid pro quo machine. This is the legacy of the Bob King era, when he ran ANAB’s predecessor, RAB, and likewise prioritized the “market” of certifications over the validity of them. King, who was wrong more than he was right, just handed an infected scheme over to Knappenberger, who apparently lacks the vision, moral compassing and self-awareness to know that he could have fixed ANAB’s tarnished reputation, rather than trashing it further with these clumsy, ill-conceived stunts.<\/p>\n

If I were one of ANAB’s other CBs, I’d be pissed.<\/p>\n

Remember, you can voice your displeasure about this to Mr. Knappenberger in person, by attending the event<\/a>. \u00a0It appears to be free, if you can make it to Orlando.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As mentioned earlier, ANAB CEO John Knappenberger is heading to Orlando to give a speech at an event on ISO 9001 and risk hosted by one of its accredited certification bodies (CBs), SGS North America. My blog post yesterday was more snark than substance, and I have since taken a second look at the situation […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5915,"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":[5],"tags":[61,50,23,43,181,52,14,60],"class_list":["post-5912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-accreditation-bodies","tag-anab","tag-certification-bodies","tag-iso","tag-iso-17011","tag-iso-17021","tag-iso-9001","tag-sgs","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\/5912","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5912"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5919,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5912\/revisions\/5919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}