Ian, The points you make are very valid, providing they are applied intelligently as John Woodgate has already suggested. However, if your laboratory meets all the requirements of ISO17025, it would be but a small step to gain accreditation, which would make your reports acceptable to product certification bodies and thus reduce your external costs.
A couple of pedantic points: 1. The quality management system standard is ISO 9001:2000, not ISO 9001:2002. 2. Your company is certified to ISO 9001:2000, not accredited. It is BSI who are accredited as a certification body. This is a common mistake, but if we professionals don't get it right, then what chance have we of the rest of the world getting it right. Best regards Neil R. Barker CEng MIEE FSEE MIEEE Manager Compliance Engineering e2v technologies (uk) ltd 106 Waterhouse Lane Chelmsford Essex CM1 2QU UK Tel: (+44) 1245 453616 Fax: (+44) 1245 453410 Mob: (+44) 7801 723735 From: Gordon,Ian [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 17 March 2006 09:12 To: 'Mike Hopkins'; [email protected] Cc: Tricia Rakiey Subject: RE: Calibration of test equipment Mike et al Our EMC lab is audited annually by TUV to ISO 17025 and the company as a whole is audited annually by BSI and accredited to ISO 9001:2002. As we only do in-house testing the cost/benefit of full UKAS accreditation for the EMC lab isn't worthwhile. The concerns regarding calibration are: 1 That we have a quality system in place which ensures equipment is calibrated using traceable standards. 2 That we know when any piece of equipment was LAST calibrated and if, when it NEXT goes for calibration whether it was found to be outside the manufacturers specification or not. If it is found to be outside the manufacturers specification then any compliance work performed with that piece of equipment since the LAST calibration will be repeated. Thus the "cal due" date is arbitrary. It is essential however that you perform checks to ensure the equipment is still functioning at regular intervals - e.g. on a regular basis I measure the voltage generated by our transient generator and use a reference source to ensure our receiver + cables + antenna + room are working. Trend analysis is also performed. Ian Gordon - This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to [email protected] Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas [email protected] Mike Cantwell [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: [email protected] David Heald: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
