Q: We have a specification that states test reports shall be from an facility certified to ISO 9001:2008 Quality management systems–Requirements. Our test reports are from a facility certified to ISO/IEC 17025-2005: General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories.
Isn’t ISO 17025:2005 under the ISO 9001:2008 umbrella?
A: Your interpretation is, indeed, correct. Actually, for a testing lab, accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025 is superior to registration to ISO 9001! As you know, your accreditation agency actually observed your personnel performing tests. They had to demonstrate competency. This was in addition to the verification that you had a working management system in place (that’s why they call it accreditation and not registration. We won’t even get into the misuse of the word certification).
To make sure your customer gets the assurance they want, I recommend you contact your accreditation agency. Ask them for a letter that states this equivalency. That will probably blow your customer away – or at least amaze them! Unless you can show the text you provided to ASQ was from one of the ISO or ANSI standards-writing committees, as an official interpretation, it probably holds little weight.
Your customer is right to monitor your performance this way. Recent food safety issues, prominent in the news, have a common element to them — insufficient attention to supplier performance. Expect to see more of this as the manufacturers and distributors pay more attention to their supply chain. I expect you are or will be doing the same for your critical sub-suppliers. Remember too, there are many ways to monitor supplier performance. Registration/accreditation is one of the ways.
Dennis Arter
ASQ Fellow
The Audit Guy
Columbia Audit Resources
Kennewick, WA
http://auditguy.net
For more on this topic, please visit ASQ’s website.