Conformity assessment and metrology: Where to go in the future?

摘要

A couple of years ago ISO CASCO launched a major project of transforming all the existing ISO Guides on conformity assessment into a comprehensive series of ISO 17000 standards, which are now,at various stages of development. As the concept of traceability underpinning all measurements has been a basic mission of metrology, a number of these standards have a direct bearing on metrology. The series is logically based on a definition standard, ISO 17000, giving, among others, guidance as to which activities fall under conformity assessment. The fact that calibration does not might have important consequences which must yet be assessed. A controversial discussion on some issues has been in progress concerning ISO 17011 on accreditation bodies which touches both on national metrology institutes (NMIs) with an accreditation function and on calibration laboratories at large. ISO 17040 on peer review could be used with an advantage to support mutual recognition arrangements among a limited number of bodies of a specialized expertise (e.g. CIPM MRA among NMIs under the Metre Convention). ISO 17025 has been the most important standard for the metrology community and it is now undergoing a major overhaul taking on board the uncovered requirements from ISO 9001:2000. These changes might have a great impact on quality systems in laboratories. ISO 9001:2000 can be easily cross-referenced with ISO 17025 but accreditors, in pursuance of their business interests, would prevent it from happening. The author is a member of the corresponding ISO CASCO WG 25 responsible for this revision. We are now confronted with a proliferation of ISO 9000:2000-based standards (clones), some of them requiring accreditation as nearly the only way to demonstrate technical competence (e.g. ISO TS 16949). This paper will discuss alternative ways to achieve that. In general, the paper will give up-to-date information on the developments outlined above and discuss the consequences and further steps from the viewpoint of metrology.