Courtesy: ISO 17065: Competency requirement for product certification body
Some certification schemes, or the product certifiers that operate those Schemes, may require that the product supplier operate a Quality Management System registered to ISO 9000, or that the testing be performed by a laboratory accredited to ISO 17025. The decision to set these requirements is most often made by the person or group which owns the Certification Scheme.
Certified products are typically endorsed with a certification mark provided by the product certifier. Issuance of a certification mark is at the discretion of the individual product certifier. ISO Guide 65 does not require the product certifier to offer a certification mark in the event that a certificate is offered. When certification marks are issued and used on products, they are usually easy to see and enable users to track down the certification listings to determine the criteria that the product meets, and whether or not the listing is still active.
An active certification listing must minimally include indication of the following information:
- The specific product or type of product certified
- The qualification standard that the product is judged to meet
- The date of certification (and if applicable, its expiration)
Product certifiers may choose to include much more information than that listed above, but ISO Guide 65 specifies the bare minimum which must be made available regarding the certification status of a product.
These listings are typically used by an Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ), such as a municipal building inspector, fire prevention officer, or electrical inspector, to compare the product’s use or installation with the intent of the rating by testing. In order to comply with the code, the product listing must be “active”, as products and companies can become “de-listed” due to re-testing showing that a product no longer meets qualification criteria, or a business decision by the manufacturer.
The widespread availability of the Internet has led to a new kind of certification for websites. Website certifications exist to certify the website’s privacy policy, security of their financial transactions, suitability for minors, among many other acceptability characteristics. In broadcast engineering, transmitters and radio antennas often must by certified by the country’s broadcasting authority. In the United States, this certification was once called “type acceptance” by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and applied to most services except amateur radio due to its inherent homebrew nature. Today the FCC requires all testing of transmitters and antennas to be performed in a laboratory accredited to ISO 17025, with that laboratory being part of the overall organization that houses the Product Certification Body (TCB).