In today’s global economy, companies in the industrial field are doing business all around the world. In an attempt to standardize and regulate the manufacturing being done, accrediting agencies have been created to develop universal manufacturing standards. While the idea of these accrediting agencies makes a lot of sense, recently there have been many questions on who oversees these agencies, and who is running and financing them.
With many different accrediting agencies out there, the idea is that a manufacturing company could choose the best one that fits their budget and time frame to achieve this certification from. Once this certification is achieved, such as an ISO 9001, AS910, as well as many other certifications, which will be recognized by large companies, that require them, this also helps get the certified company more business. What appears to be happening though is that big companies are not accepting certifications from all accrediting agencies. They seem to be accepting them from only one large specific agency, and rejecting certifications from others.
Looking deeper at the one accrediting agency which big companies across many industries accept their certifications from, many potential conflicts of interest seem to arise. Daryl Guberman, who is the CEO of Guberman-PMC, LLC, and a long time professional with over 34 years of experience in the aerospace, medical implants and materials, and printing fields has been doing a lot of research into this area. He has created numerous videos on his YouTube channel investigating many of these conflicts of interests, and potential abuses of power. These videos are a shocking view of what is happening in the accreditation arena. His findings have found potential issues such as foreign influence in the accrediting group, global standards that are not actually global, and a country club mentality where if you are not friends with the right people, you are kept out of the lucrative manufacturing business world that exists. Expensive fees are also charged to these smaller companies who are trying to achieve these certifications, with everything from consultants requiring traveling costs to be paid on top of their training fee, and manual writing fee. These types of expenses can put small companies out of business and prevents them from gaining potentially business saving contracts from the big companies of an industry.
By allowing one company to gain a virtual monopoly over the certification industry,the question becomes who is in charge of monitoring the industry to make sure these monopolies do not happen? It appears that the accrediting industry is very politically connected, with a lot of money changing hands. As a family run business, Mid-West Screw Products makes it a priority to provide the best quality and service for our customers. We hope changes are made that prevent a company like ours from being shut out of doing business with big companies because we do not play their accrediting games. We appreciate the opportunity our customers give us to provide them quality products and are always looking to make improvements to our facility and capabilities to meet their needs. If you have thoughts on how the suspect actions of accrediting agencies are causing problems in the manufacturing industry, let us know here or in the comments below