iso – mania in romania: pro and contra arguments - European ...

estrictive. On a market where such things occur frequently, the problem of the certification body reduces to amere issue: it leaves the market, if it preserves its strict assessment conditions, or it remains on the market, bygiving it up. This may lead and it has even led to some extent, to a wrong perception that organizations have,according to which the respective certificate is nothing but a piece of paper which may be bought as any otherproduct, without the applicant organization’s putting a high effort into deserving it. This perspective is extremelyharmful as far as the certification system’s credibility is concerned, and what is even more severe, is that suchloss of credibility is not felt only on a national scale, but on a worldwide one.In order to eliminate, as far as possible, the causes for such an approach, in Romania, the Romanian Associationfor Quality, ARC, as a representative organization in this field, tried to act in two directions. The first directionwas to promote a set of criteria in order to select a consulting organization/or a certification body includingethical behaviour of their employees.The basic idea was that of changing, if possible, the organizational culture regarding quality in general andcertification, especially, by insisting within the organized events, upon the internal advantages of a managementsystem and only after that, on the external advantages. Concerning such advantages, they become true only if theorganization which provides consultancy, respectively the certification body, is credible, and this credibility isgiven by some essential aspects.Regarding the organizations offering consultancy, these aspects include the following:a. The impartiality of the consulting organization towards the certification body; cases when theconsulting organizations “recommends” certification by a certain certification body, are not at all rare.Such consultants should be avoided, because their lack of impartiality towards the certifier is obvious,so it is expected that the management system designed and implemented by the consultant, is not aneffective and competitive one, because the certification is ensured in the virtue of the “goodrelationship” with the certification body, anyway.b. The quality of the consulting process: consulting does not mean “selling” a documentation, more oftenthan not, being so general, that a possible reader may not identify even the company’s field of activityfor which is it assumed that it had been elaborated. Moreover, consulting also does not mean theconsultant elaborating procedures. An effective system, which suits the organization’s features, may beperformed only to the extent in which such documentation is elaborated even by the process owners,obviously, guided by the counselor. This is why consulting organizations /consultants, who motivatingthey do not want to “interfere” in any way with the respective company’s business, offer a “ready touse” documentation, should be avoided. In the same context, the consultants’ competence is alsoimportant, as well as their training and recommendations.c. The duration estimated for designing/developing/implementing the system: Those consultingorganizations/consultants, which propose 2-3 months as a designing / developing / implementingperiod, should also be avoided. A system which is designed and implemented in such short a time is byfar an ineffective one.d. The clarity of the contractual agreements and guarantees: the fact that the consultingorganization/consultant provides consulting for elaborating the documentation is insufficient;implementing the system is as important, and the consulting organization must support the companyduring this stage, as well. In fact, the consultant’s role is completed when the company obtained thesystem’s certification.Regarding the certification body, these aspects include the following:a. The impartiality of the certification body towards the other participants to the certification field,towards the consulting organization and towards the accreditation body. Nobody is surprised any longerwhen, behind a certification body, there is a consulting organization. As an organization willing toobtain the certification, cases in which the certification body recommends the consultant, should beavoided. As long as impartiality is not ensured, the results of the audit performed by the certificationbody will not be objective and they will not bring any benefit to the certified company; on the otherhand, the credibility of the certification should also be considered, granted by certain certificationbodies, which, are owned, under cover, even by the personnel within the body’s management or by theirbusiness partners, in which case a certification body obtains the accreditation within one week, while anhonest certification body waits months to pass until it is granted the same accreditation.b. The drawing up, by the certification bodies, of certain clear and well documented contractualagreements. The agreements issued by the certification bodies many times happened to be extremelyvague, without stipulating the obligations the applying organization has towards the certification bodyand the other way round. Such an agreement should also include the appeal procedures to which theapplying organization is entitled, in case certain disputes regarding the performed audits occur, and itshould clearly establish all the related costs: the costs for the certification, for the maintenance and forthe re-certification audits, as well as other additional costs, if case may be. There are certain

certification bodies which charge extra fees for the right to use the issued certificate, in the virtue of thecopyright law, without mentioning such costs in the contractual agreement.c. The duration of the certification audit and the frequency and duration of the surveillance audits: theyshould correspond to the size and complexity of the organization to be certified. Not few times, out ofthe desire to win money, certification bodies are tempted to reduce the number of auditing days,contrary to the number of days recommended by the applicable guides. This practice does not come tothe advantage of the future certified organization, because surely there will be processes or activitieswhich had not been covered during the assessment, so the degree of confidence in the auditing reportdecreases.d. The competence and the ethical behaviour of the auditors used by the certification body for performingassessments. From this point of view, Romania, too, faces the inconsistency of the requirementsregarding the auditors’ qualification, from one certification body to another. More exactly, most of thetimes, the certification bodies internally qualify their auditors, more or less in compliance with thequalification requirements as per ISO 19011, let alone a series of other knowledge and abilitiesabsolutely necessary for developing an effective audit: the ability to perform an audit which is processoriented,the existence of personal skills, the comprehension of certain advanced management concepts,but not only for quality management.In order to support all the persons involved in the certification process, the Romanian Association for Quality,ARC, acts on another direction, namely by ensuring highly trained and certified personnel, accordingly torequirements recognized all over Europe.Thus, ARC has currently created a true audit school, based on the PRU-EQO scheme. This certification schemebecomes more and more famous and appreciated in Romania, due to the competence, professionalism and ethicalbehaviour of auditors certified according to this scheme. An important element within the training of futureauditors is represented by the approach of third party audit, from the perspective of the added value for theaudited organization. As worldwide, certification loses ground as far as the external credibility is concerned,certified organizations look for advantages not out of doors, but inside of it, in the area of the added value of acertification audit. It is a new challenge to which an auditor must be capable to give a proper answer, and ARCtries to meet such new requirements. There are in Romania certain certification bodies – all national – which useauditors trained and certified in compliance with the PRU-EOQ scheme only, which have a good nationalrenown and which do everything possible to improve the certification credibility.Moreover, last year, ARC developed and started to run the PRU-EOQ certification scheme for certifyingmanagement systems consultants, accordingly with the requirements of standard ISO 10019 also. Although thepurpose of this standard is not to be a referential for personnel certification, a series of requirements may beuseful for ensuring the professionalism and the ethical behaviour of future consultants. Obviously, the purpose ofthis step is that of also constituting the bases of a nationally acknowledged school for management systemsconsultants.Unfortunately, these steps are not sufficient enough to stop the degradation of the certification’s image,especially because they ensure the “downwards – upwards” approach only. Without an upwards–downwardsconsistent approach, as well, efforts will prove useless. In this sense I think we should consider certain aspects:• To establish worldwide requirements which should be more exigent for accreditation/certificationbodies, including as regards the used assessment personnel, and possibly, to establish certain unitarycriteria for the assessment personnel certification/registration, which are clearer and more exhaustivethan the ones mentioned in ISO 19011.• A more thorough control made by EA to accreditation bodies, including as regards the analysis ofrelationships with related bodies.• A more effective control system from the accreditation bodies to the certification bodies, possibly byperforming extraordinary surveillance audits.• To create a feed-back collecting system from the end customers of the certification system, namelyfrom consumers, regarding the effective efficiency of systems within the certified organizations and toconsider them in the case of surveillance audits.ConclusionsIn order to stop the deterioration of the credibility of management systems certification, there must be a mutualwill and a close global collaboration, within all the involved structures: the IAF, the regional accreditationgroups, like EA, IAAC, PAC etc, national accreditation bodies, systems certification bodies, consultingorganizations, personnel training/certification organizations, companies etc. If the end users’ perception aboutthe necessity and the advantages of the existence of the systems certification schemes does not improve quickly,the deterioration process will continue, ending by becoming considered them as useless.