" Companies are being hoodwinked.  ISO 9000 accreditation is becoming a hocus pocus exercise. Companies are purchasing inefficient, meaningless systems and accreditation's, " said Tony Davidson, a spokesman for the SABS."  There is a real danger that questionable accreditation's would completely undermine the credibility of South African ISO 9000 certificates. This would have disastrous consequences for local exporters.

    He said alarm bells rang when accreditation bodies based assessments on standard quality manuals after spending little or no time in factories or with management. This manual was then presented as a basis for the certificate to be issued.

    One chief complaint is that it is against International Standards Organisation (ISO) rules for a company to both devise a quality system and assess it's own work in order to award an ISO 9000 certificate.

    One of the companies allegedly doing this is Quality Assurance Systems (QAS), a British owned company offering local small to medium manufacturers full certification within 60 to 90 days at a fraction of the cost.  Two of QAS's UK directors were prosecuted in 1995. Similar legislation did not protect South African companies, Davidson warned.
 
    He said organisations issuing ISO 9000 certificates no longer had to be accredited by either the ISO or South African National Accreditation System (SANAS) which left the system open to abuse.

    However, Edward Heard, the MD of QAS in South Africa, said his company does not offer a quick fix.

" Small companies could not afford the open-ended commitments demanded by bodies such as the SABS. These bodies frequently provide bureaucratic and cumbersome procedures that are irrelevant to smaller companies, " he said.