Accreditation does not guarantee success; it is only one step along the quality journey involving quality management, error reduction, customer satisfaction, and continual improvement. It contributes to the following:
- Enhances confidence in certificates and conformity statements
- Enhances quality of results by ensuring their traceability, comparability, validity and commutability
- Provides measurement of strength and integrity of the quality system
- Allows for continual monitoring of the quality system
- Enables recognition for efforts
- Gaining an accreditation is considered to be a milestone for many organisations. Maintaining that accreditation over time through sustained outcomes and performance is an even greater achievement.
Accreditation must be objective, transparent and effective.
Accredited laboratories tend to:
- Perform better on proficiency testing
- Are more likely to have a working quality management system
- Ensure international consistency in conformity assessment
-itok=noc8rxHK.jpg)
Traceability: the ability to describe and follow the life of a requirement in both a forwards and backwards direction
Comparability: results are comparable to each other
Validity: the extent to which a concept, conclusion or measurement is well-founded and corresponds accurately
Commutability: the ability of a material to yield the same numerical relationships between results