"An audit for one is an audit for all" - 30 AIM-PROGRESS members have now signed up to the joint principle on Mutual Recognition of audits. The audited supplier list for sharing between participating companies now contains close to 8000 records and the update planned for January 2013 will most likely reach the 10,000 mark. Members are using the list to identify where audits have already been done, so that they can request suppliers to make these available, if they wish to, in order to avoid additional audits. This exercise is, of course, undertaken in strict compliance with anti-trust law and under supervision of external legal counsel. No information is shared which points to the customer-supplier relationship. Our 2012 target to cover 35% of participating members' audit needs through this list has already been exceeded by a number of companies who are covering between 40-50% of their audit needs through Mutual Recognition. AIM-PROGRESS works closely with the International Trade Center (ITC), a joint agency of the WTO and the UN, who are helping with the benchmarking of standards and protocols through use of their Standards Map. They have developed a specific new off-line protocol benchmarking tool for AIM-PROGRESS to support protocol comparison between member companies and thus facilitate mutual recognition. This tool was presented in a webinar on 12thDecember, a recording of which is available on the member zone of the AIM-PROGRESS website (access-restricted to members only). For more general information about how Mutual Recognition works please visit the relevant public page on the AIM-PROGRESS website.
