EQNET

15th Anniversary of IQNet: an ongoing Success Story

The recognition of certificates across borders has become a very important issue worldwide.In fact the ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 certifications are increasingly requested in business transactions, particularly by importers, and they are playing an even more important role in the future becoming tools to proof the ability to satisfy the market demands and as a consequence for the companies, to expand their international business.

However, the growing demands of ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 certifications might represent also a potential barrier for the international trade and one of the IQNet tasks is to act in a way to minimise this problem. The international recognition is one of the most important values of a certificate and all IQNet partners are strongly committed to grant certificates with worldwide recognition. Nevertheless, the problem of the international recognition of the certificates is also an important political issue in many parts of the world: as an example I would like to underline the situation in Europe where the political and economic imperative is the drive of the relevant countries towards a single market where the technical barriers to trade are to be eliminated. In this context IQNet was set up in January 1990 as EQNet, consisting of eight founding certification bodies, representing eight Western European countries, aiming to achieve the mutual recognition of their quality system certificates.

After a couple of years it was clear for all the founding members, that a recognition limited to Western Europe was not enough to satisfy the customers expectations, so in April 1994 the network decided to prepare its transformation into a global association of world's first class certification bodies, able to provide assessments and certifications to organisations of all sizes, business and social sectors worldwide. In 1998 IQNet became a registered association based in Switzerland and it started to operate by its own structure assuring more valuable and independent services to its partners.

Recently IQNet decided to separate the institutional activities from the business activities performed on behalf of its partners: an IQNet Ltd entity was established with the relevant shares in the hands of the Association. Now IQNet is the largest Association of certification bodies in the world where the partners are recognised and independent organisations active within all industrial and service sectors where the ISO 9000 and the ISO 14000 standards are applicable. In order to belong to IQNet, a certification body must meet the requirements of ISO/IEC Guides 62 and 66 in addition to those of the IQNet statute, IQNet bylaws and IQNet code of conduct and ethics.

I would like to emphasize that all 38 IQNet certification bodies are issuing the IQNet certificate to their certified companies are very proud to be part of the market leader in the management system certification field. About 30% of the international certification market is served by the IQNet partners who are competing with more than 600 certification bodies spread around the world which are not recognising their certificates.

Another important feature of the IQNet partners is that they are accredited by the respective national accreditation bodies which are to a large number member of the IAF (International Accreditation Forum). In some cases the IQNet partners are accredited by more than one accreditation body. IQNet can show the largest list of such accreditations worldwide. Let me underline also the remarkable number of auditors and experts we have inside our associations: more than 10.000 auditors and more than 5.000 experts covering all economic and business sectors; they are available to serve all our customers around the world in the most professional way.

Through these auditors we can perform assessments in more than 30 different languages taking in due consideration the culture and the mentality of the auditees.

The services provided to the international market are in line with the main IQNet aims which are: 1. To recognise and promote management system certificates issued by the partners (once certified, accepted everywhere)2. To provide assessment and certification services to global customers on a worldwide basis (thanks to the Global Support service)3. To meet customer needs by offering innovative, value-adding services IQNet is serving the global market through various customer tailored products/services:
First of all the IQNet partners issue their certificate along with the IQNet certificate which is the evidence of their international recognition


Secondly, IQNet can provide audit and certification services according to the need of our customers. Some of the most important examples are:
International audits performed worldwide by one or more international IQNet partners chosen by the customers for their multi sites certification projects. The result can be one global certificate and/or several certificates for each site issued by one or more IQNet certification bodies as requested by the customer.

Co-certification is a process by which IQNet can issue partners’ certificates on the basis of a certificate issued by an IQNet certification body without further assessments.
Joint audits are international audits with the involvement of more than one partner which allow issuing joint certificates.

Global audits through the Global Support Service can be considered as the international audits mentioned before but with the IQNet partners’ auditors co-ordinated by an IQNet leading certification body or by IQNet itself who receives the task to manage the entire international certification project of the customer (usually the headquarters of the multinational companies ask for this service)

When applicable IQNet can also integrate different kinds of audits (i.e. quality, environmental and safety) in all parts of the world allowing a remarkable reduction of time and, as a consequence, of cost. The IQNet partners as well as the IQNet certified organisations can differentiate themselves on the international market: in order to facilitate such activity we have developed specific tools and services.

The most important four are:
the IQNet certificate
the registered IQNet logo
the registered IQNet certification mark
the IQNet website The IQNet certificate is granted to the organisations certified by IQNet partners. It is the most known and appreciated certificate in the world (about 250.000 certificates worldwide):

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