ISO 17025:2017 Certification

ISO 17025 is the main international standard for general necessities for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories. ISO/IEC 17025:2017 is the most recent version of ISO 17025, updated from 2005. In major countries, ISO/IEC 17025 is the standard most labs must hold accreditation in order to be considered technically competent. There are many commonalities with the ISO 9001 standard, but ISO/IEC 17025 is more explicit in requirements for competence, and applies directly to those organizations that produce testing and calibration results and is based upon more technical principles producing many benefits for laboratories.

In order to reflect the latest changes in market conditions and technology, the new edition of the standard includes the activities and new ways of working of laboratories today. It covers technical changes, vocabulary and developments in IT techniques and takes into consideration the latest version of ISO 9001 on quality management.

The ISO/IEC 17025 standard supports laboratories to provide consistent data and technically valid results to their consumers, so as to be deemed competent. It is important to mention that this standard is also applicable to all organizations performing laboratory activities such as universities, research centers, and others, and can be used by examination bodies and/or other conformity assessment bodies. It also supports to promote constant enhancement of data quality and laboratory effectiveness.

Benefits of ISO/IEC 17025:2017 Certification

• By choosing an accredited laboratory, customers will experience decrease in the costs of re-testing their products;
• By adopting or implementing the ISO/IEC 17025 standard necessities and attaining accreditation, a laboratory will gain nationwide and worldwide recognition, thereby making it easier for clients to readily recognize and select reliable laboratories;
• An accredited laboratory will experience an increase in revenues and profits due to the laboratory’s skilled capability to provide reliable and technically valid results;
• By complying with the necessities of the ISO/IEC 17025 standard, the laboratory will have a better control over its activities;
• The laboratory will make sure the validity of standard, non-standard and laboratory developed test methods which impact the provision of reliable data to their clients.
• When performing testing/calibration services, the laboratory managers/technicians will be able to access better and updated technologies, which will increase the confidence in generating valid results;