On an organisational level, ISO9001, was launched to provide recognition to organisations globally for their use of Quality Management Systems. In its 25 years of existence, it has become one of the go-to standards globally with over a million organisations already certified.
Whilst ISO9001 has become the most popular certification of its kind for organisations, it doesn’t feed through to their Quality Management or Lean and/or Six Sigma practitioners.
Unfortunately, this has paved the way for a very lucrative market to be abused.
But, this is where the brand new ISO18404 standard, which was published in December 2015, will look to answer the question of internationally recognised certification.
In an effort to stamp out the aforementioned bad practice, the practitioner of Lean and/or Six Sigma will now have the opportunity to prove their competencies in accordance with what’s required of them in the standard. Alongside this, they will need to keep a continuous record of their work for regular checks internally and by a certification body, if they are a Master Black Belt or Lean equivalent.
It’s still very early days for ISO18404 and Professor Tony Bendell has called a meeting of accredited certification bodies for the end of January with the Royal Statistical Society to discuss a pilot accreditation scheme; there are many interested parties and take-up of this scheme is expected to be quite high.
We’d love to see you there.
Stay up to date with Services Limited on social media!
Twitter: @ProfTonyB
LinkedIn: Professor Tony Bendell
Website: servicesltd.co.uk