As a member of a testing laboratory, I have suffered the problem you show. For us, the answer is not very clear and we have to obey our country Accreditation Body criteria.
If you apply this EN 45001 requirement exactly, no company can accredit its own laboratory. But some big companies do it. The Accreditation Body permit it if both, designing department and testing department below to different divisions of the same company and their staff is also independent. By other hand, if you require some test to a external laboratory and your equipment does not comply, the laboratory will show you the unconformities. Is it not a kind of consulting service? If you make the necessary changes, the same test laboratory can test your product again and give you the final test report. The Accreditation Body ask us not to tell our customer how to resolve his problem; we only can tell him the unconformities. But most of the times, the description of the unconformities includes the solution though we do not want. It is not possible to distinguish it. Moreover, if a client ask me for the best solution to an unconformity, what shall I do? Shall I say: "I know the answer, but EN 45001 forbids it to me"? So, if we offer consulting + testing, we are not in conformity with EN 45001, but if we offer testing + description of unconformities + new testing, nobody can discuss it. But with different names, we are offering the same thing. Obviously, that is a lack in the EN 45001. ======================================================== Juan P. Pena / Electrical Safety Area Company: CETECOM, S.A. (http://www.pta.es/ing/empresas/cetecom.html) e-mail: [email protected] The opinions expressed are personal, not necessarily of my company. ======================================================== ---------- De: [email protected][SMTP:[email protected]] Enviado: lunes 16 de diciembre de 1996 6:03 Para: [email protected] Asunto: testing lab - standards\ethics Hello everyone, I would like your opinion (based both on your knowledge of the iso25/iso45001 and personal experience and view) on the "certification\testing lab anomaly". The issue is this: if one entity (let's call it the "LAB") offers both to consult and fix technical problems AND to test and verify the product after it has been fixed, don't we have an inherently unhealthy situation? Also,if the LAB offers a "fixed price" for a specific job(i.e. $XXX to get certification to Y), doesn't this too make a potentially unhealthy situation? Don't get me wrong. I'm not accusing anyone and I believe they all mean well and make a honest living, but is this 100% kosher? I'm not familiar with the various standards governing the internal workings of the labs, but do they cover this issue? thanks for your opinions moshe valdman
