This goes along with what I mentioned earlier – i.e. it really may not matter what agreements accrediting bodies have with each other, it only matters what agreements governments have with each other in their certification systems. Consequently, while accrediting bodies may agree that the like each others systems, unless the government accepts the accreditation, then a lab in a non MRA country may not be able to use the DoC process.
Dennis Ward Evaluation Engineer American TCB Certification Resource for the Wireless Industry www.atcb.com 703-847-4700 fax 703-847-6888 direct - 703-880-4841 cell - 209-769-8316 NOTICE: This E-Mail message and any attachment may contain privileged or company proprietary information. If you received this message in error, please return to the sender. _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Grace Lin Sent: 07/16/2007 1:28 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Lab accreditation - DoC for FCC Part 15 FYI. Here are two slides excerpted from the last week's 2007 IEEE International Symposium on EMC, presented by Mr. Hurst of the FCC: Slide 25: " MRA Status - Phase I Phase I (mutual acceptance of tst data) is operational with the following countries: Australia Canada Chinese Taipei European Union Hong Kong Korea Japan Singapore" Slide 27: " MRA Status - Phase II Phase II (mutual acceptance of approvals) is operational with the following countries: Canada European Singapore" I hope this helps. Grace On 7/16/07, Tarver, Peter <[email protected]> wrote: Dennis and K. - What the APLAC agreement seems to be is a MRA between accreditation bodies to accept another accreditors ability to accredit a lab. Like any MRA, it's scope may be limited and you'll need to read the agreement to understand its extent. However, I don't think the governments necessarily need to get involved, but I am willing to be educated. I cite as an example, our organization used to have a NATA accreditation to perform EMC, safety and telecom testing for Australia and New Zealand standards. Similarly, we had NVLAP accreditations for the same functions in Canada and the US and out scope of accreditation included various European Norms and IEC standards. NVLAP eventually also performed audits of our labs on NATA's behalf. This was how an MRA was implemented in our case. No government entity was involved for the sake of their being a government entity (yes, NVLAP is operated by NIST, but that had no particular effect either way on our accreditations; we could have selected A2LA). >From how I understand APLAC and similar MRAs operate, the lab in India would have to maintain accreditations to perform testing against the relevant standards (FCC, IC, etc.). That accreditation can be audited by an in-country national accreditation body. What I'm not clear on, without further research, is whether or not the in-country accreditation body can issue the initial accreditation, or whether that must be granted by an accreditation body in the 'destination' country. In any case, a lab that is accredited by an organization that is an APLAC signatory does not imply de jure acceptance the lab is accredited to perform testing for all standards addressed by all other signatories of APLAC. The accreditation must state what standards the lab maintains an accreditation for. Ultimately, you must ask for a copy of the lab's scope of accreditation to determine what testing they are capable of performing. Regards, Peter L. Tarver, PE [email protected] CONFIDENTIALITY This e-mail message and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. 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