Dozens of standards developers from around the world met in San Francisco recently for the annual meeting of the International Accreditation Forum’s technical and executive committees.

The meeting, held March 24–30, included day-long breakout sessions for several of the technical committee’s work groups, including the ISO 20000 work group, which continued its work on revising and reviewing the service-sector standard; the ISO 14065 work group, which is developing an international standard for greenhouse gas measurement and reduction; and the ISO 9000 advisory group, which discussed the ongoing revisions of ISO 9001 and ISO 9004.

The technical committee (TC) agreed to form work groups, as requested by several industry representatives. The new work groups will explore accreditation and standardization in the product certification sector, and a global accreditation program for ISO 13485 (which relates to medical devices), among others. Improving the reputation of accredited certification was a major focus of the IAF’s two-day TC meeting, with several members acknowledging that shoddy products shipped by certified companies has the potential for seriously eroding the value of accredited certification. The problem lies with unaccredited certification companies and inexperienced auditors that are more driven more by commercial interests than by quality improvement, noted several committee members.

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