ISO Archives - Page 5 of 5

The most recent ISO survey results were released. It shows a significant rise in Energy Management certificates, along with gains across all standards.

ISO does this every year, as it has done since 1993, to show the number of certificates issued to management system standards in the previous year.

The big increases were found in energy management (ISO 50001) with a 332% increase, and food safety (ISO 22000) coming in at 20% higher between 2011 and 2012.

ISO Study 1

The ISO survey results do only cover certificates by subset of those issued, specifically by IAF accredited certification bodies (registrars). The IAF is essentially an international club of accreditation bodies – this is the layer that audits registrars like TUV, BSi, NSAI, UL – there are more. You are audited by the registrar, the registrar is audited by the accreditation body, or a representative of them.

There is arguably a higher level of credibility with an accredited registrar, and when selecting vendors on the basis of their ISO registration status, it’s a good idea to ensure their certificate is accredited – fodder for another post, however.

I’d like to say that if we were to count the non-IAF certificates, the numbers would likely be higher, which is generally true, but percentage-wise; from one year to the next – who knows. I won’t even mention it then.

The ISO standard for the medical devices field (ISO 13485) and the information security standard (ISO 27001) did quite well, too, both showing about a 12.5% growth.

9001 certifications in 2012, which are by far the most numerous at over 1.1 million worldwide, show steady growth in the ISO survey, along with the environmental standard (ISO 14001).

Personally, I wasn’t surprised to see the very healthy increase in ISO 27001 certifications, and I think it will continue to do so. The growth in the food safety sector with ISO 22000 is also pretty stunning, especially in light of how recently it has been added to the playing field.

The full report can be found on ISO’s site.

Thanks for reading; go forth – and calibrate thyself.

Sal

The ISO General Assembly is a Big Deal in the world of standardization (our world, as luck would have it) and it is being held this week. This year, the 36th anniversary, is hosted by the Russian Federal Agency on Technical Regulating and Metrology (GOST R) in St. Petersburg, Russia and will run until the 21 September. This is not the first time the meeting has been held in Russia, by the way, the members met in Moscow back in 1967.

The General Assembly is an opportunity for ISO members to meet and exchange ideas, eat food and dance. Well, I made up the dancing part to see if anyone was paying attention. Come to think of it, maybe there is some dancing – who knows? Representatives from over 130 countries will be there – maybe some of us can attend next year? Anyone??

There are two good places to get information on it at the moment:

Twitter, under the hashtag #ISOGA, and
on ISO.org – they have a dedicated page for it (of course) – it updates frequently.

I’ve posted a variety of YouTube videos, as a play list, below. If your Spanish is rusty you may want to skip ahead on the first one, though there are subtitles. It is, after all, an international organization….