Combined certifications

Never. I'm not sure, under ISO/IEC 17021 that it's "allowed", per se. Also, what happens if a) the company gets suspended for a major in let's say ISO 9001 but it doesn't affect any ISO 14001 requirement? The whole certificate is suspended? Er, no...

 

Registrars do issue combined certificates. The suspension question is one for the registrars, but my educated guess is that the certificate would be re-issued with only the remaining standard.

 

I encountered a situation where a CB auditor actually suggested a “back to back” stage 1 and 2 - without verifying that the requirements were in place. He described they would need to seek ANAB approval, which is correct. Then, he dismissed that all the appropriate documentation was still under development as “not needed”. WTAF are these auditors smoking?

 

I’ll have to give it some thought, but it seems to me that the scope might be different for different standards in some cases. Hmmm

 

I don't know where you find "these auditors." I don't know any who would do this. Though I don't disbelieve you; there are, after all registrars who insist on the right to decide whether to show up on site at all.

 

The scope statements do differ, though the practice of excluding this or that process from environmental and/or safety standards is not supposed to be allowed.

 

If you work in a certain geography, clients believe their auditor travel will be less, or the auditors will be from the mother ship - and therefore “better” (ha!) because the HQ shares that geography. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Big CABs are frequently driven to control overhead costs which means low/no auditor training or similar investments (auditors not reviewing paperwork in the office for example, because they should be out auditing) or people who do technical jobs, not being technical because that costs more and they could be earning fees, too.
Smaller CABs don’t have the revenue and because accreditation costs are relatively high, they cant attract professional auditors nor technical staff, nor train/develop the ones they have. Catch 22.

Of course, if clients wanted better performance for their money - which they don’t even get from their own internal auditors (because their training is crap, copies the CAB process and no-one knows how to manage an internal audit program) they would refuse these half baked audits. But then, the hapless QA mgr fears retribution (I know of at least 2 auditors who regularly use passive aggressive behaviors before and during their visits). Of course, since the CAB technical mgrs are somewhat clueless, it never gets fixed.

 

There has long been concern of audit returns in geographies. However, I am not clear on how that results in the behavior you have described. That said, both large and small CBs are expected to deliver audit conformance to the directives laid out by ANAB, DAKKS, etc. They get audited, receive nonconformances if they deviate, train their auditors about the NCs raised during accreditation audits, are delisted if they deviate without remediation, and so on. I can't comment on the occasional aberrant behavior, only what's expected of accredited CBs who hire them.

The CB audits should never be "half baked audits." If they are, the client organization should 1) Complain and 2) Shop for a better Registrar.