ISO 17025 or 9001? Pulp and Paper Testing Laboratory

[tamale]

We are a paper mill with no ISO certification. Management wants to head into a certification direction starting with the lab. It is a full pulp and paper testing lab with a government certification for third party environmental testing.

My experience is with ISO9001 and ISO14001implementation.

My question is should we go with 17025 or 9001, being that we will start with the lab and only eventually go to the mill floor where 9001 will have an impact?

Are there any specific advantages to the 17025 route?

Thank's for your help!

Tamale

 

[sunilgaidhani]

Yes If you want to get accreditation Specific to Laboratory you should go with ISO 17025. It is different than other QMS standard Certification as it is accreditation not certification, it more about the technical competence of Testing and Calibration Laboratories. It consists 5 Clauses first three are scope and normative reference. 4 th clause is about Management Requirements ( Many subclauses are on similar lines with ISO 9001) and Clause 5 is about Technical Requirements( Asks about Equipments, Test Procedures, Environment, Test Methods, Calibrations, Inter laboratory comparisions, Measurement Uncertainty Estimatiuons, Reporting)


But it will not be applicable for your plant and for this you have to go for ISO 9001, ISO 14001 as well.

 

[tamale]

Thank you Sunilgaidhani, I did not know about the accreditation aspect. That makes it even more interesting.

Tamale

 

[sunilgaidhani]

But as you are familiar with ISO 9001 , ISO 14001, Half the work is similar to these cerification. If you will go through standard as well as accrediation body guidelines it will be more clear. You can get more infromation through A2LA, UKAS, ILAC websites.