Courtesy: Voluntary certification of products
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).
The International Accreditation Forum (IAF) has a listing of all recognized Accreditation Bodies whose accreditations to the ISO Guide 65 standard are deemed equivalent. From the IAF MLA informational page:”IAF is encouraging more of its members to join the MLA as soon as they have passed a rigorous evaluation process to ensure that their accreditation programs are of world standard. The consequence of joining the IAF MLA is that conformity assessment certificates issued, within the scope of the IAF MLA, by conformity assessment bodies accredited by any one of the members of the IAF MLA will be recognised in the world wide IAF program.”
Most countries only have a single Accreditation Body representing their economy in the IAF MLA. The two exceptions are the United States with American National Standards Institute (ANSI), American National Standards Institute – American Society for Quality National Accreditation Board (ANAB, a subdivision of ANSI), American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA), and International Accreditation Service (IAS) as signatory members, and United Accreditation Foundation as Full Member of IAF (International Accreditation Forum) Europe with Germany’s Technischer Überwachungsverein (TÜV), and Korea which is represented by Korea Accreditation Board (KAB) and Korean Accreditation System (KAS). These listings are current as of March 2012, but will likely change in the future as more Accreditation Bodies undergo the required peer evaluations in order to become signatory members of the MLA.
Each Accreditation Body is required to keep a listing of those organizations it accredits, as well as a Scope of Accreditation which details the activities that the organizations can perform, whether that be testing, inspection, or product certification.
Accreditation Bodies routinely audit the Product Certifiers whom they have accredited in order to determine if the performance or actions of the organization have changed and do not meet the requirements of the Accreditation Body and the International Standards they are to conform to.
It is not mandatory for each Accreditation Bodies to be member of IAF or to join IAF in any manner, there have been several accreditation Board like AB-CAB, ESMA, NACI etc.