Hi. First of all, you have to excuse my american. I am an italian man and I work as a Quality Assurance in a group producing wire and strip metal parts, welded and riveted contacts and any kind of springs. We supply automotive Clients too. I am a little bit in trouble with the point 7.6.3 of the ISO/TS 16949: 2002. Nowdays I am writing a manual (according to 17025 but we don't want to take the certification now) for one new internal laboratory that makes proof and testing such as microhardness, metallographic analisys (we have internal heat treatment in our process). Obviously we have an internal calibration laboratory for our instruments (i.e. calipers, micrometers) too.
My question is: do I need to consider the internal laboratory used for the calibration in the manual said above? I think the activity made by the calibration laboratory is a normal way to work and we can't consider in the same way like the nrew laboratory.
Is there anybody that can help me?
Thanks.
Nicola

If I understand what you're asking, you're trying to figure out whether calibration activities should be considered in the scope document for your internal lab. The short answer is yes .. and no....!

Yes, if you are doing in-house calibrations of instruments you need to have documented the training/competence of whomever it is that performs these calibrations. But, no, unless your internal lab is providing "calibration services" - which is a different beast from calibrating your own instruments in-house - than the calibration function isn't part of your lab scope. It would be if you, for instance, were calibrating instruments you were then certifying and sending out to customers. It doesn't sound like that's what you're doing. So YES document the training/competence of whomever is performing in-house calibrations of your own instruments, but NO, you don't have to include the calibration function in your lab scope if you're not performing calibration "services."

My two cents worth anyway, if I understood your question correctly.

Now my ideas are more clear.
I forgot to tell we already have a manual according to 16949 in which we talk about the laboratory used for calibrations. Now we have created a new lab (lab2) for microhardness and metallographic analisys and We want to make a new manual, only for this lab2, on the base of the 17025.
As you wrote our internal lab makes calibrations only for our instruments, not for our customers. For these guys we have all the necessary training/competence but I think this is a normal requirement from ISO/TS 16949: 2002.
So this lab2 I am tryining to write a manual according to 17025 even if today we don't want to take the certification (even in this case we use lab2 only for us, not as a "services").
what I think is we can put in new manual only the lab2, because the lab1 (calibration) is already considered in the quality manual according to 16949.
My question born because, obviously, 17025 talk about calibration laboratories and laboratories for proof and testing: in my case I think we have to talk about only to proof and testing laboratories.
Thanks for the answer.
Nicola

Nicola
If you are planning on ISO17025 in the future, could you issue certificates between lab's to prove calibration/testing. Thus avoiding the TS16949 problems in lab2. You could then market lab2 as an independent and perhaps make some money.
Paul