tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3406411703614952652.post8955994559328220241..comments2024-03-15T14:38:26.791-07:00Comments on Pragmatic Quality Blog: Will this be the end of global certification?Michael Millshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14976901407919487127noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3406411703614952652.post-18311035884578803802022-04-19T08:33:58.066-07:002022-04-19T08:33:58.066-07:00That sounds like a fair way to go about it. I wi...That sounds like a fair way to go about it. I will look forward to seeing what your thoughts are.<br /><br />ScotlynAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3406411703614952652.post-6758417237408868392022-04-16T20:15:29.986-07:002022-04-16T20:15:29.986-07:00Hello Scotlyn, and thank you for porting your comm...Hello Scotlyn, and thank you for porting your comments over to this blog. I'm not sure if you will see this reply, but I hope so.<br /><br />You make a number of important points. These are things I have heard verbally for years, in side-conversations in the hallway or the lunchroom. But I've never had the chance before now to look at the points laid out crisply in print so that I could think through how to address them.<br /><br />I think I want to proceed as follows. I'd like to move the discussion up to the main body of the blog, because as you may have noticed there is not a lot of activity in the Comments. And since your initial statement is not short, I think I want to copy it into a post of its own.<br /><br />Then in the subsequent post -- one week later -- I'll start taking up your points to discuss them. Right now my sense is that I'll end up saying, "Well, yes, ... ALMOST." In other words, I think you have identified important issues, and that you have the direction right -- but I think I don't carry them quite as far in that direction as you do. But in any event I won't know for sure until I actually start writing my answers.<br /><br />Once again, thank you for raising in print the kinds of questions that I usually hear only in the hallways, but that we in the Quality business really do have to face. Please watch this space over the next couple of weeks for my installment in the conversation. I post every Thursday morning at 8:00 am, Pacific Time. And please feel free to reply to anything that I say.<br /><br />Best regards,<br />MichaelMichael Millshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14976901407919487127noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3406411703614952652.post-32987020259269810092022-04-14T02:31:33.181-07:002022-04-14T02:31:33.181-07:00Hello, I am the person who made a comment on the e...Hello, I am the person who made a comment on the ecosophia blog, about the general issue of the global system of standards and certification. I will quote the full comment below, but just want to add that a comment on a different topic, which was made by JMG appears to summarise all of my own comments most succinctly. <br /><br />I am happy to further discuss this with anyone who wishes. <br /><br />JMG's comment: “controlling the narrative is what people do when they can no longer control the facts” <br /><br />Keep this comment in mind, while considering what it was that I myself had said. (I will here connect my two comments given separately there).<br /><br />"I have a great personal interest in the theme of standards and certifications, since I worked for many years as compliance officer for a local fish processing company. That is to say, I was the person in the company that interfaced with the global standards and certification industry. By the time I left my job I was convinced of these things:<br /><br />"1) that the relationship between certified standards and actual quality is fictional. Making the product is one domain that is stubbornly incommensurate with the quite separate domain of documenting, and monitoring compliance with product standards. (in almost exactly the same way as the Tao Te Ching states that the names we can give a thing is not THE THING). The standards will never be the products, nor ever be able to satisfactorily describe them.<br /><br />"2) Because of 1), it follows that the more standards, the less quality. Standardisation is, in fact, an essential component of the “crapification of things”.<br /><br />"3) that the relationship between certified standards and the actual economy is parasitic, in that the more jobs that are created to certify, to inspect, to manage, to comply, to produce documentation (including my own entirely NON-productive job), the more that productive jobs (the making, transporting of goods, and the providing of services) are destroyed.<br /><br />"4) that, because of (3), the global standards and certification industry would eventually eat production and the economy, and bring the whole thing to a collapse from too much top-heaviness, and too little bottom sturdiness. Out of which, small, light, and fast non-compliant producers and purveyors who can stay below the radar and out of the limelight, will emerge and begin to create whatever comes next.<br /><br />I have to tell you that the prospect of a set back to the global certification industry would not cost me a hair’s worry. It contains enough of its own contradictions and unstable weight to collapse without help. Although, to be sure, those employed in its giant documentation fabricating enterprises will resist being made redundant. And it will make thunderous noise as it falls."<br /><br /><br />Best regards, ScotlynAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com