Forwarding industry should beware of 'quick-fix' accreditations

BOGUS ISO 9000 certificates are being awarded by companies who are offering quick-fix accreditations, and the freight forwarding industry should beware of who they are dealing with, says a senior South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) spokesman.
Companies are being hoodwinked. ISO 9000 is becoming a hocus pocus exercise, says Tony Davidson, SABS regional manager for KwazuluNatal.
A number of companies are purchasing ineffective, meaningless systems and accreditations. They are allowing themselves to fall into the trap of having a consultant do the registering for them. You can't be both the teacher and the examiner in this respect.
It is against International Standards Organisation (ISO) rules for a company to both devise a quality system and assess its own work in order to award an ISO 9000 certificate, he says.
But, he says, organisations issuing the certificates no longer have to be accredited by either ISO or South African National Accreditation System (Sanas), which has left the system open to abuse.
To mean anything the registrar must have international accreditation, he says.
Sanas sets down the procedures and requirements for registrars whose task it is to evaluate a company after implementing the system as scheduled by the consultant or by the company itself. What the registrar cannot do is to set up a system and tell the client how to go about it, and then come along and examine it for accreditation.
ISO 9000 enables companies and their employees to be more efficient and profitable by following the correct procedures. But doing it correctly takes time and expense.
To counter this, there are operators in this country offering full certification within 60 to 90 days at a fraction of the cost it requires from the established providers. That becomes attractive to small and medium manufacturers, but their future with a certificate from this source is generally pretty bleak.