ILAC.org

About ILAC

The International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) first started as a conference in 1977 with the aim of developing international cooperation for facilitating trade by promotion of the acceptance of accredited test and calibration results. In 1996, ILAC became a formal cooperation with a charter to establish a network of mutual recognition agreements among accreditation bodies that would fulfil this aim. The ILAC Arrangement is the culmination of 22 years of intensive work.

On 2 November 2000, 36 laboratory accreditation bodies, full members of the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC), from 28 economies worldwide signed an 'arrangement' in Washington, DC to promote the acceptance of technical test and calibration data for exported goods.

The arrangement came into effect on 31 January 2001. The 'ILAC Arrangement' provides significant technical underpinning to international trade. The key to the Arrangement is the developing global network of accredited testing and calibration laboratories that are assessed and recognised as being competent by ILAC Arrangement signatory accreditation bodies.

The signatories have, in turn, been peer-reviewed and shown to meet ILAC's criteria for competence. Now that the ILAC Arrangement is in place, governments can take advantage of it to further develop or enhance trade agreements. The ultimate aim is increased use and acceptance by industry as well as government of the results from accredited laboratories, including results from laboratories in other countries. In this way, the free-trade goal of 'product tested once and accepted everywhere' can be realised.

SOURCE

ISO/IEC 17025

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ISO/IEC 17025 is the main standard used by testing and calibration laboratories. Originally known as ISO/IEC Guide 25, ISO/IEC 17025 was initially issued by the International Organization for Standardization in 1999. There are many commonalities with the ISO 9000 standard, but ISO/IEC 17025 adds in the concept of competence to the equation. And it applies directly to those organizations that produce testing and calibration results. Since its initial release, a second release was made in 2005 after it was agreed that it needed to have its quality system words more closely aligned with the 2000 version of ISO 9001.

The standard was first published in 2001 and on 12 May 2005 the alignment work of the ISO committee responsible for it was completed with the issuance of the revised standard. The most significant changes introduced greater emphasis on the responsibilities of senior management, and explicit requirements for continual improvement of the management system itself, and particularly, communication with the customer ^[1].

There are two main sections in ISO/IEC 17025 - Management Requirements and Technical Requirements. Management requirements are primarily related to the operation and effectiveness of the quality management system within the laboratory. Technical requirements address the competence of staff, methodology and test/calibration equipment.

Laboratories use ISO/IEC 17025 to implement a quality system aimed at improving their ability to consistently produce valid results ^[2]. It is also the basis for accreditation from an Accreditation Body. Since the standard is about competence, accreditation is simply formal recognition of a demonstration of that competence.

A prerequisite for a laboratory to become accredited is to have a documented quality management system. The usual contents of the quality manual follow the outline of the ISO/IEC 17025 standard.

Contents [hide] 1 Predecessors 2 Accreditation Bodies 3 See also 4 Notes 5 External links