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. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail message, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail message, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail message in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copies of this email and any prints thereof. ABSENT AN EXPRESS STATEMENT TO THE CONTRARY HEREINABOVE, THIS E-MAIL IS NOT INTENDED AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR A WRITING. Notwithstanding the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act or the applicability of any other law of similar substance and effect, absent an express statement to the contrary hereinabove, this e-mail message its contents, and any attachments hereto are not intended to represent an offer or acceptance to enter into a contract and are not otherwise intended to bind the sender, Sanmina-SCI Corporation (or any of its subsidiaries), or any other person or entity. - 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 ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________
