ASCB was established in 1995, at the point the modern certification market was gathering pace. ISO had published the first ISO 9000 standards in 1987 and begun counting certificates in 1993, and the numbers have climbed every year since. By 2024 ISO's annual survey recorded more than 2.7 million certificates across the four most widely held management system standards.

ASCB has operated independently throughout. It works to ISO/IEC 17011, the international standard for accreditation bodies, assessing the certification bodies that audit and certify organizations, and as the standards multiplied so did its scope: management systems, persons, products, inspection, laboratories, training, and the development of bespoke standards where a sector needs one.

More than 230 conformity assessment bodies have been accredited by ASCB. The organizations they certify span more than 140 countries, employ more than one million people, and represent a combined annual turnover exceeding USD 250 billion.

What accreditation involves has not changed with the scale. An accreditation body assesses a certification body against the requirements of the relevant standard on a periodic, risk-based, sampling basis, and keeps doing so. The assessment looks at people, procedures and decisions: whether auditors have the knowledge and experience for the work, whether the certification process is free from commercial pressure, and whether certificates are granted, maintained and withdrawn on the evidence. Accreditation covers a defined scope, is kept under surveillance, and can be suspended or withdrawn.

ASCB applies the published standard as written, without proprietary schemes or non-standard criteria layered on top. That was the discipline in 1995 and it is the discipline now, at a far greater scale.

The combined turnover and workforce figures relate to organizations certified by ASCB-accredited bodies, not to ASCB directly.