Chemical Analysis: Does ISO 'Accredit' Materials Labs? ISO 17025?

[Bill Ryan - 2007]

Chemical Analysis

In the old days ("pre QS") we needed to have an A2LA accredited lab "certify" our aluminum alloy chemical composition as our materials lab was not accredited. With our QS (and now TS) registration our lab was "automatically" accredited (for GM, anyway) per GP-10.

Our current supplier of an aluminum alloy billet (semi-solid) is closing its doors. We located a new supplier in Austria. The new supplier is registered to ISO 9001:2000. With each shipment we receive a "certified" chemical analysis for each heat (as we did with the old supplier). My question is this:
"Does ISO "accredit" a materials lab in the same manner, or should I be asking for a third party accreditation that my customers will accept?" I understand I'll end up asking each "non-GM supplier" customer of ours, but I'd like to understand as much as possible when I talk to them.

Bill

 

[SilverHawk]

External Lab & Incoming Quality Product

Under TS2 requirement 7.6.3.2 External Lab is applied to external commercial independent lab. used for inspection, test or calibration. Whereas under 7.4.3.1 Incoming Product Quality, it required "part evaluation" by a designated lab.

I am not too sure whether it spelled out for a A2LA or ISO 17025 accredited lab.

 

[howste]

The easy answer is this: certification to ISO 9001:2000 does not accredit your supplier's laboratory.

If you are using them only as a supplier, then you determine what requirements they need to meet. If you also use them as an external laboratory (i.e. pass on the results of their testing to your customer as evidence that your org. meets requirements), then they have to be certified to ISO 17025 or otherwise acceptable to the customer per 7.6.3.2.

 

[SteelWoman]

We have a similar situation with steel suppliers who send us their certs on the material they supply us. We "get around" the issue by doing our OWN testing of the material to check it against what the supplier said it was and also to then make US the testing site. In-house testing is covered in ISO and while it says you can comply with the requirements for in-house labs by being "guide25" certified, it's not a "shall."

On our end of the world at least we looked at Guide25/a2la certification and it is absolutely prohibitively expensive to even think about. And we're a fairly large organization. I don't see how any small organization could even think about it.

All IMHO, of course!

 

[Bill Ryan - 2007]

Thanks gang.

We typically go Steelwoman's route with our aluminum sow and additives suppliers (just going for low buck as we produce our aluminum alloys). My concern was that this is a "special alloy" used in semi-solid die casting and we buy it (in billet form) as opposed to producing it. The alloy is used for structural automotive parts and the customers get a little testy with ANY changes in the manufacturing of their parts.

Bill

 

[Joe Cruse]

Bill,

we are ISO 9001:2000 registered (have been ISO registered since '94) and we have our own in-house lab. This lab provides final chemistry results on all alloy shipments going out to our customers. We supply certificates of analysis on the material. I can't say I've ever run into a problem with our customers over certification of the lab. The lab is included under our ISO cert. We've been asked by the rare customer if we've looked at ISO 17000 for the lab; we have, but it is cost prohibitive, as already mentioned. Many of our customers take the COA as the analysis for the material and drive on. We also supply the big 3, and it's never been an issue. We, in turn, agree to use a vendor's coa or chemistry/size information for raw materials in our own process, in instances where thay can do the testing under specified terms. Part of the reason for certification is to ensure a standard approach so that we can be assuredthat we they say we are getting is what we ARE getting, and the same for us and our customers. Saves time and resources. Of course, raw materials analysis is the first thing to start, in case of production problems, both with us AND our customers .

Joe