Improvement in competitiveness, achieved by means of certification, along a whole production chain with its very many products and services, is well proven and visible.  The variety of performance in systems liable to certification is increasing, and, more often, deals with disciplines substantially differing from those traditionally used by the operators.

Certification of a complex system, i.e. a plant, therefore requires a huge number of activities, managing of many and differentiated relations with various stakeholders, acquiring and managing massive amounts of information, processing models, including procedures and templates, and reports.  In such circumstances there’s the temptation to give up certification or to consider it just a toll to pay.

In a completely analogous way to what was carried out by the public administration, it’s time to economically move from certified plants to self-certified plants. The latter are designed, managed and monitored in such ways as to “certify” their performance to all stakeholders.  The following paper analyzes the conditions for the transition from third party certification to self-certification, and mentions some kinds of systems / plants that are already able to do so.

CERTIFICATION AND SELF (AUTO) CERTIFICATION

The “certification” term does certainly not exhaustively mean the concept of quality, yet it well represents some of its more pragmatic aspects.

Given a system that produces goods or services, or generic goods or services, its quality characteristics can be defined using the models proposed by different authors [1], [2] and using for the preventive (possibly predictive) and actual measurements the available techniques [3], [4].  The context of quality characteristics is determined by the market(s), regulatory requirements, manufacturer’s internal rules, local rules and what else does or will define the product life cycle context.  Hence, to any and every system we can (and should) assign a set of indicators the measures of which, at appropriate frequencies, assure the reliability of the system itself.

Official certification bodies, e.g. IAF / International Accreditation Forum, ISO, etc. focus some of the above indicators with standards such as ISO/IEC 17021 and ISO/IEC 17011, that define the certification term and the rules how to obtain it.

The most famous is ISO 9001, born 1987.  It’s also the most common: according to ISO 1.5 million companies / organizations have quality management systems registered to this standard.  More conservative sources consider this figure excessive and point to something more than one million.  N onetheless, it’s big business when we think that ISO 9001 gave birth to environmental, automotive, aero-space, railway standards.  [5].

It’s to be wondered why – since the registrars’ majority are of naval origin.   ISO 9001 is still not applied to naval processes and systems.

A VIEW OF (TRADITIONAL) CERTIFICATION MARKETS

Developing Countries, Far East in the first place, have the lion’s share of registrations.   While in the West, the certification growth is stagnant.  Unless buyers put pressure or requirements on their suppliers, certification still represents a guarantee for developing countries, where its number grows exponentially.

Though these countries strive for sales, a National Geographic documentary showed that in a Far Eastern yard building a huge container ship for a Danish shipping company a continual surveillance by the european team was needed to assure quality and on-time processing.

Last but not least, language and culture differences do affect project development, hence certification management.

CERTIFICATION CHALLENGES 

Certification challenges include:

• Certification is a cost that tends to grow, especially for the companies / organizations that want to have or develop specialized internal personnel to maintain a relationship with registrars.
• Many third party auditors, still today and despite ISO’s statements, look for non conformities against the more formal ISO requirements, instead of confirming conformity to customers’ requirements.  Consequently, certification does not add value to company / organization growth but adds to bureaucratization between company / organization and registrar focused on documentary issues instead of effectiveness.
• Despite the many statements addressing harmonized standards, standards are still industry and product specific.  We wonder if and how could it be different.  LNS Research [6] confirmed that there is no ISO standard  specifically addressing health and safety issues and that most operators use standards less recognized and universal.
• The standards-making system is however – and unfortunately – slow to follow and keep up with the continuous and sometimes unpredictable market changes and it also sometime requires a profound cultural change.  An example is given by the ISO standard 9001:2015, that has a risk based thinking model together with a process management approach, process effectiveness and efficiency.  A significant impact is expected on management models.
• Systems and processes effectiveness and efficiency measures, being due to “harmonized” interpretations, present difficulties.  Since more than a decade ago all too many companies / organizations, especially the small ones, have had a difficult time to maintain their ISO 9001 registration.  ISO 9001:2015 and its risk oriented approach is going to make it even tougher, both in managerial and organizational terms.
• Legislation and normative documentation has become gigantic and, despite its annoying slowness to adapt itself to the always changing instances, keeps to continually increase and to modify what was previously established.  The harmonization attempts, for example the so called New Approach, according to which the EU normative bodies should issue standards consistent with EU directives, are not completely effective to prevent conflicts among standards, as it is demonstrated by the discrepancies observed even among ISO standards [7].
• These very frequent – and often dramatic – normative changes are a challenge even for the more structured companies and organizations even those that can dispose of legal and / or technical departments.  So they have to use specialized resources or consultants who attend seminars, work groups or to standards drafting.  But the consultants themselves are often submerged by numerous newsletters, among which is difficult to find out what is really important.  For example, the official italian decree no. 115 dated June 04, 2014 modifies official registration and accreditation procedures, is known to operators by word of mouth only.  Evidently, communication is secondary to sanctioning.
• Having said what’s above and what will follow, it’s out of any doubt that nowadays certification is a primary tool that companies have to use to compete on their markets, or not be out of them. The key issue is that (third party) certification is a problem and it will be even more so; it is and will be a necessity for basic trends according to which the product or service “quality” play a primary role. (Note: while “quality” was initially defined as conformity to specifications, acceptable price and on-time delivery, its concept has expanded to stakeholders’ interests).
• Competition’s growth drives to improve products / services characteristics, their logistics and the partnership between supplier and buyer, where continual performance monitoring is fundamental.  Though very market oriented, the car market, even on small and low-cost cars – now supplies systems to continually monitor fuel consumption.  What was almost an environmental mania a few years ago, has now become a common use tool.  There’s no rule – so far – for such a tool but the car maker’s.  It can however be expected that the next years will see car makers adapt their product to the changing market demands.
• Technological integration of products and services contexts in which the suppliers have to maintain given performance levels not to endanger the whole system’s performance . It was true in the past but the next years will see the number of technologies active in just a complex system increase.  “Reciprocal quality” will be a winner especially when specific specialists will win over generic specialists.  Examples are already available includi anti-intrusion security controls that use different kinds of sensors – proximity, volume, audio-visual, etc. – together with highly sophisticated communication and filing systems based on the most up-to-date I&CT technologies.
• Supply chains (though the term “chain” does not appear to be proper) mean that final quality of a product or service is subject to the quality of intermediate products and / or services.  A striking example is given by the food industry, where certification need overtakes certification opportunity both for processes and products.  The next foreseeable step – not only for the food industry – will be certification of logistics processes with on-time-delivery requirements which are based on using vehicles and transportation system highly impacting environment.
• Newer and newer and ever more demanding product / service and production processes performances that in the past – even recent – were practically unknown. The example of waste that’s used as secondary material is a very important signal of the change in course and the future will see increasing.  Citizens are more and more required to separate waste to improve efficiency of recycling plants and systems. Single citizens are just a sample, while a generic production system gives a vision of the future needs. S takeholders’ number and quality, that were limited until a few years ago, have now grown and diversified, interact much more with companies activities and with public administration actors.
• If the logics of quality, and therefore of certification, will guide us for a long time, the evident problem is to make more efficient and more effective the methods by means of which such logics are ascertained, demonstrated to customers and to stakeholders.  Products’, services’, production systems’ performances have also to be demonstrated or, it would be possible a bottle-neck counter effect that slows down or even interrupt innovation and development.  Such a situation was observed in Italy when the number of certificates that had to be issued to citizens had grown so high as to saturate the certification processes and therefore create serious problems to the citizens.  The italian decree no. 445 published on December 28, 2000 (note the date …) by the public administration requires self-certification that implies first-person responsibility unless delegated to third parties.  Differently, random inspections can be carried out and their results sanctioned. Systems and plants can be treated similarly.  A plant or a system is self (or auto) – certified when it is capable to give to a generic – or specified – stakeholder authorized to measure its performance (Note: the increasing interest of generic, unauthorized stakeholders’ interest catalyzed by the Media might raise a further problem), at any moment, the necessary information and data for evaluation against normative requirements. Not all stakeholders are obviously the same, it’s therefore important to measure their needs and contributions. It would be a bad mistake, for instance, to give to an environmental-performance interested stakeholder plant information and data that he or she would not understand. On the other hand, it would also be a bad mistake not to give to a specifically interested stakeholder the necessary information and data.
• Self / Auto – certification benefits the certification actors and those involved in plant life cycle design and maintenance [8]. Plant commissioning is also involved, its logistics and suppliers control, too. A system status is determined via its dynamics, that’s given, at any moment, by the significant and detectable measures. Modeling is based on these principles [9], engineers and maintenance experts work according to these principles.  Plant owners or managers could reduce activity or verification costs or replace them with investments, could reduce undesired impacts connected to verifications and keep benefiting on their markets of competitive plusses coming from verified quality policies and their systemic implementation.
• In addition to what above, certification bodies and auditors could, based on verified and consistent information, reduce the resources programmed for inspections, focusing instead the evaluation models and the implementation procedures. Communities would benefit of systemic controls, general and continual, on inputs to health, safety, environment policies, and to design and development of new measures, such as water foot-print or the likes [10].

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[1] Garvin D.A., Managing Quality, The Free Press, New York, 1988
[2] Zeithaml V.A., Parasuraman A., Berry L., Delivering quality Services, Free Press, New York, 1990
[3] A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) 5th edition, Project Management Institute Inc., USA, 2013, chap 8, Project Quality Management
[4] Hauser J.R., Clausing D., The house of quality, Harvard Business Review, May-June 1988,
[5] ISO Survey 2013 downloaded from www.iso.org/iso/iso–survey
[6] Leavoy P., ISO’s Glaring EHS Omission: A Health and Safety Standard, Posted on Thu, Sep 11, 2014
[7] Hoyle D., Exposing the Uncertainty About Risk in ISO DIS 9001:2015, CERM Risk Insights n. 59 del 18/09/2014
[8] Bellucci A., Plant Lifecycle Management – Opportunità per la costruzione di nuovi prodotti e servizi,  Impiantistica Italiana, Novembre – Dicembre 2013
[9] Bertuglia C. S., Vaio F., Non linearità, complessità, caos. Le dinamiche dei sistemi naturali, Bollati Boringhieri editore, Torino, 2007
[10] Aldaya M. M., Hoekstra A. Y., The water needed to have Italians eat pasta and pizza, UNESCO-IHE Value of water Research report Series, n. 36, may 2009, Delft, NL

Bio:

Arturo Bellucci: Graduated Electronic Engineer, contracted teacher by Bologna University for management methods of complex projects, engineer and architecture student, graduated management engineer. Free lance consultant. From 1972 to 1988 Telettra manager (telecommunications) Since 1988 consultant and trainer on Project Management issues, product innovation, organizational design, process re-engineering. Author of articles and books on project management and product innovation.

Manuela Rossi: Graduated management and IT engineer at Bologna University. Consultant and trainer to improve organizational efficiency, safety, process efficiency, development and maintenance of management systems.

Umberto Tunesi:  Chemist, former coordinator of multi-

national registrars’ operational R&D, sales, quality control,

audit units, more than twenty years experience as auditor and designer of management systems (quality, environment, safety, social accountability) aimed to continual improvement, presently engaged in risk processing (analysis, prediction, prevention). Writes ad hoc articles on USA specialized magazines.