2017 was a wild rollercoaster year, for sure, with many coming away with a sense of relief as we enter the New Year. For Oxebridge, though, it was the year that many of our initiatives started to take hold. Yes, other people are taking credit for them, but it matters little so long as the changes stick.
For example, Oxebridge has pushed the IAF certification body community to develop a universal database of ISO 9001 certifications, so that verification and searching of certifications are accessible to all. I pitched that to the IAAR and ANAB back in 2005, at a meeting personally attended by Randy Dougherty. Now Dougherty is making the rounds promoting the new IAF database idea, without mentioning Oxebridge, natch. But the point is that it has mainstream momentum now, when back in 2005 the CBs and ANAB treated me like a pariah for suggesting it. I told them they could make money on this, and it took them 12 years to figure that out. Hopefully, they won't screw it up.
2017 also saw a tremendous victory against the trolls within ASQ, an organization that was forced to
update their decades-old Code of Ethics in response to Oxebridge's humiliating coverage of the racists and harassers in their ranks. That's nothing short of incredible when you think about it: an outside body (I'm not even a member) pressured an international organization with tens of thousands of members to change its entire culture nearly overnight. Again, ASQ HQ folks are taking credit, and sniping at me for having to drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st century, but the world knows what happened. ASQ is now whining about how they are going to live with this new code, already telegraphing that they don't actually have any intent on holding members accountable to it, but the ball has already dropped. ASQ is going to have to enforce its code, or risk hemorrhaging members. Rumors are swirling that ASQ has a "Weinstein" in its upper ranks, and that's likely to hit the mainstream press, so they may have to get in front of this now, or risk a full PR implosion within the Milwaukee HQ.
2017 also closed out with a last-minute rebuke of the IAF scheme, with the US Dept. of Defense publishing
a scathing report that proved three major aerospace firms were sitting on dozens of major nonconformities all while receiving "official" AS9100 certs from supposedly trusted accredited registrars. While not mentioning Oxebridge (the IG's office probably doesn't even know who we are), it was a huge affirmation of the work we've been doing for almost two decades. For the first time, an official US government agency proved conclusively that the IAF scheme is not working, thereby no tonly debunking the IAF's marketing but ISO's as well. With this in hand, we can press for reform that's not based merely on Oxebridge's anecdotal evidence -- which is routinely ignored -- but with the US Dept. of Defense on our side. We should all be agreeing that people's lives should not be put at risk under the ISO banner, but so far ISO and the IAF disagree; they're cool with it. We're going to stop that.
And of course, Oxebridge emerged victorious in a 17-year battle against the Elsmar website, which had been defaming us since, literally, January 2000. The defamation continues, and it's not clear when people will learn that writing checks with my name on it can't be fun for them, but it creates legal momentum that makes each successive victory that much easier.
Looking Forward
2018 will see more of these successes. On the legal front, Oxebridge is poised to have more legal wins within the first half, as we continue to fight ASQ trolls and defamers. The certificate mill battle will pick up even more steam, and we are likely to see one of the perpetrators thrown in jail, sending a warning to the rest. Oxebridge's influence behind the scenes continues to grow, as we gain more and more "friendlies" inside the major houses, such as ISO, IAF, CASCO and elsewhere.
But 2018 is also set to begin the drop in ISO 9001 certifications. Using a not-quite-scientific mathematical model, I'm predicting that by 2020, the United States will dip below 10,000 certifications for the first time since 1995. This drop will match that seen during the last major update, between the years 2006-2010. At the same time, fraudulent certificates coming from India, China, Pakistan, Ukraine and the Russian Federation will explode, and ISO will develop a new policy that allows them to report these as valid, in order to avoid public humiliation. This will allow the certificate mills to go "mainstream" overseas, forcing the US mill operators to focus their attention in those countries. With both ISO and IAF now being led by China, this is all but inevitable; China's overtures to enforcement of the mills in that country is being received well by ISO and IAF western official, but it's duplicitous.
