IATF 16949 News Presentations from the latest IATF Stakeholder Event - Expectation that IATF 16949 certification should equate with product quality. Misguided?

From International Automotive Task Force – The IATF is an "ad hoc" group of automotive manufacturers and their respective trade associations, formed to provide improved quality products to automotive customers worldwide.

The IATF conducted a Stakeholder Event in Enghien-Les-Bains, France on 16 October 2019. A number of certified organizations and Certification Bodies participated. The objective was to inform the suppliers and certification bodies about some of the upcoming projects and the IATF Vision and Strategy initiatives, including CARA (common audit report application), non-conformity management (top NCs), the Data Analytics pilot that some IATF OEMs and some Oversight Offices are testing. All supporting the overall theme of the Stakeholder event, which was certification must equal product quality. The presentations from the event are available for download. Please click the links below to view.

1. Paris IATF Stakeholder Event – IATF Vision and Strategy
2. Paris Stakeholder Event – Introduction – Certification Must Equal Product Quality
   • Groupe PSA – Certification Must Equal Product Quality
   • Groupe Renault – Certification Must Equal Product Quality
   • General Motors – Certification Must Equal Product Quality
3. Paris Stakeholder Event – Software in Automotive
4. Paris IATF Stakeholder Event – Data Analytics – CB Breakout
5. Paris IATF Stakeholder Event – IATF CARA Project – CB Breakout
6. Paris IATF Stakeholder Event – NC Mgmt – Supplier Breakout
7. Paris IATF Stakeholder Event – Data Analytics – Supplier Breakout

As we can see in some of the presentations, the IATF OEM's expect that Management System Certification by suppliers equate with product quality. Most of us, involved with management system certification know that such expectation is not always delivered, sometimes, due to customers fault in mispecifying, misdesigning, misprocurement of products etc... But, all in all, you can tell that not all is well in the IATF 16949 world, in terms of system certification delivering confidence in the supply chain and the IATF OEM's now expect the CB's to "deal with" certified suppliers not delivering on the OEM expectations.

It is quite clear that Industry Controlled certification schemes, such as the IATF, IAQG and TL-9000 are forcing the CB's to do a much better job at planning their audits, taking into account the certified organization (the CB's customer) performance in terms of delivering product on-time, on-spec and on-cost.

Totally different from the vanilla ISO 9001 certification scheme, where the line assembly approach to audits don't force CB Lead Auditors to engage with the registrant about their performance, seen through the eyes of their customers. Because of that, undeserving organizations easily maintain their ISO 9001 certificates, which leads to a global questioning of the efficacy of the accredited certification process. To me, that is the likely top reason for the continual declining of ISO 9001 certificates around the world, as clearly shown in the last ISO Survey.

Re: "As we can see in some of the presentations, the IATF OEM's expect that Management System Certification by suppliers equate with product quality. " There seems to be a widespread misperception that ISO 9001 ensures good quality. All it does is ensure there is a management system in place, including planning for quality, that makes poor quality less likely than if the system was not there. It is sort of like complaints about the annual flu vaccine; some vaccinated people get flu anyway so people say "it doesn't work" when the truth is that the cases would have been a lot worse had the people been unvaccinated, while the vaccine does work for others.

One good thing about IATF 16949 is that it asks people to look at efficiencies (i.e. considerations other than quality) that affect the cost of the product or service. We must remember that poor quality is but one of the Seven Wastes, although usually the most obvious of them.

It makes sense that the ultimate goal for IATF OEM's would be "Certification = Guaranteed Product Quality", haven't really considered it in these clear of terms before. I think it may be more accurate to say that "Certification = Meeting all OEM Performance Criteria". Concerning to think that the opposite will also hold true.

Sounds like IATF certification will become much harder to obtain and retain down the road. Wonder if the OEM's have considered how they will make sure all their key suppliers remain qualified?

The one presentation that caught my eye was below. I'd imagine this will become quite invasive and costly for suppliers. Many of the "Performance criteria" contained on scorecards are not even quality related (cost, delivery performance, etc.)

Bran said:

Sounds like IATF certification will become much harder to obtain and retain down the road.

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Hope springs eternal....the concept of certification being earned is foreign to many. The commoditization and trivialization of management system certification has made many people believe that certification is an undeniable right of an organization. It shouldn't be, as insiders in this business and long time Covers know that a significant percentage of certified organizations have substandard systems, what, by definition, should prevent certification.

Unfortunately, however, the IATF themselves are partly to blame for the problem. When they instituted a ruling that the scope of the IATF audits should include ALL automotive work, irrespective if the registrant's customer ascribes to the IATF 16949 standard, or not, they made a very stupid decision. Why should a CB auditor delve into the HONDA product line of a tier one supplier, if HONDA gives a "rodent's derriere" about IATF 16949? It is simply stupid to force the auditor to spend any time there. S/he should spend ALL of their time and effort assessing the Tier 1 organization within the confines of the system touching products that go to automotive customers that demand that supplier to be IATF 16949 certified.

Suppliers switch form more to less demanding CB (auditor teams), because there is direct customer-supplier relation between them.
Maybe suppliers should pay an annual certification fee directly to OEM, who will transfer money to CB auditing supplier?
Who should have authority to select CB and whether switching would be allowed - I don't have opinion in this matter.

Sidney Vianna said:

substandard systems ... by definition, should prevent certification.

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I couldn't agree more with this statement. That said, the definition of "substandard", and subsequently "standard" really feels like a moving target because Automotive OEM's can unilaterally change their requirements at any point, or change their sentiment about specific suppliers, which then gets flowed onto the supplier scorecard. In addition, what is standard or substandard varies by IATF OEM, so it is difficult for organizations to comply when the requirements for different automotive OEM's customers are overlapping or conflicting.

There will always be tug and pull with supplier/customer relationships, however they seem to be taking an extreme angle that seems over-burdensome and unnecessary by pushing special audits (that could result in the loss of certification) because of individual OEM customer scorecard under-performance. Many of the scorecard items are out of quality's control.

IATF on the cover states "Automotive Quality management System Standard", but is absolutely written as a business system standard. I think if OEM's want to start using as a business system standard, they need to be more clear with their intention. Quality, in many organizations is not empowered to control many items on customer scorecards, such as cost or delivery performance.

Sidney Vianna said:

S/he should spend ALL of their time and effort assessing the Tier 1 organization within the confines of the system touching products that go to automotive customers that demand that supplier to be IATF 16949 certified.

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Also agree. We have at least one, Tier 2 automotive customer that is some incredibly small percentage of our business, and because our auditor knows they have a document floating out there by the title "Customer-Specific Requirements", this has caused issues in several audits.

Sebastian said:

Maybe suppliers should pay an annual certification fee directly to OEM, who will transfer money to CB auditing supplier

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Customers becoming brokers for CB’s is not a good idea. As I have said numerous times at The Cove, the solution is always keep the CB accountable to their stakeholders. Until everyone understands that any certificate that does not provide confidence and assurance to it’s users, is, by definition, a nonconforming product delivered by the CB, and measures must be taken for the CB to deliver what is expected of them, the path of least resistance certificate mills, will be “rewarded”. Users of certificates have to become smarter to counteract misguided purchasers of certification services. Look at my sig line.