QUERIES On ISO 17025 AUDIT - Measurement Uncertainty Budget, etc.

[neo_inst]

Hi ,


I have an 17025 Audit coming next week n i have loads of queries and would be grateful if anyone could answer them

first of all , we have sent our QM, UNcertainty budgets etc to the Auditors and as of now they havent asked for any changes to be done (atleast in case of uncertainty ) DOES IT MEAN OUR UNCERTAINTY BUDGET IS OK ?

1) What can i expect in an Audit from Uncertainty point of few .. I mean how important is uncertainty VALUE.. coz there cannot be a right/ wrong answer .. there is a possibility that i could have not have considered some factors since i believe a factor of k=2 is a Huge number and would take into account some of the factors.

2) What is the Auditor going to ask regarding Uncertainty..i mean is he going to get into statistics or just the way i have come up those values..

3) Now in worst case is he going to FAIL me on the basis of uncertainty ? !!

PLease do let me know any other points i need to pay attention to before the Audit from 17025 point of view

Regards
Neo

[Ryan Wilde]

neo_inst said:

Hi ,


I have an 17025 Audit coming next week n i have loads of queries and would be grateful if anyone could answer them

first of all , we have sent our QM, UNcertainty budgets etc to the Auditors and as of now they havent asked for any changes to be done (atleast in case of uncertainty ) DOES IT MEAN OUR UNCERTAINTY BUDGET IS OK ?

First off, good luck! The assessor will not tell you there is something wrong with your uncertainty budget until he/she sees your process. Each uncertainty budget is entirely reliant on how you do things, what you use, etc. I can say, with relative certainty, that you will have to change some of your budgets.

1) What can i expect in an Audit from Uncertainty point of few .. I mean how important is uncertainty VALUE.. coz there cannot be a right/ wrong answer .. there is a possibility that i could have not have considered some factors since i believe a factor of k=2 is a Huge number and would take into account some of the factors.

The uncertainty value is very important, as it is a quantitative representation of your capabilities. There are no absolutely right answers, but there are wrong ones.

2) What is the Auditor going to ask regarding Uncertainty..i mean is he going to get into statistics or just the way i have come up those values..

The auditor will actually go through your budget with you, including the statistics.

3) Now in worst case is he going to FAIL me on the basis of uncertainty ? !!

In the U.S.A., you never "fail". You will have discrepancies that you will have to correct before you actually are accredited, but they are almost always things that you mail proof to the accrediting body. Rarely, the assessor may have to return to ensure that something is corrected, but I haven't seen it personally.

PLease do let me know any other points i need to pay attention to before the Audit from 17025 point of view.

Make sure that your methods are sound, and if you wrote them yourself, make sure that they are validated. 75-80% of your assessment will be on competency. This is no ISO 9000 audit, and the documentation aspect is not paramount. This is a competency assessment, and expect your assessor to ask a lot of questions such as "Why do you measure this in this manner?", and "What are the contributions to your uncertainty in this test setup?", and so on.

Again, good luck!

Ryan