Conformance testing — an element of conformity assessment, and also known as compliance testing, or type testing — is testing or other activities that determine whether a process, product, or service complies with the requirements of a specification, technical standard, contract, or regulation. Testing is often either logical testing or physical testing. The test procedures may involve other criteria from mathematical testing or chemical testing. Beyond simple conformance, other requirements for efficiency, interoperability, or compliance may apply. Conformance testing may be undertaken by the producer of the product or service being assessed, by a user, or by an accredited independent organization, which can sometimes be the author of the standard being used. When testing is accompanied by certification, the products or services may then be advertised as being certified in compliance with the referred technical standard. Manufacturers and suppliers of products and services rely on such certification including listing on the certification body's website, to assure quality to the end user and that competing suppliers are on the same level.
The Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation is an international standard for computer security certification. It is currently in version 3.1 revision 5.
The ISO 9000 family is a set of five quality management systems (QMS) standards by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that help organizations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service. ISO 9000 deals with the fundamentals of QMS, including the seven quality management principles that underlie the family of standards. ISO 9001 deals with the requirements that organizations wishing to meet the standard must fulfill. ISO 9002 is a model for quality assurance in production and installation. ISO 9003 for quality assurance in final inspection and test. ISO 9004 gives guidance on achieving sustained organizational success.
An inspection is, most generally, an organized examination or formal evaluation exercise. In engineering activities inspection involves the measurements, tests, and gauges applied to certain characteristics in regard to an object or activity. The results are usually compared to specified requirements and standards for determining whether the item or activity is in line with these targets, often with a Standard Inspection Procedure in place to ensure consistent checking. Inspections are usually non-destructive.
Current good manufacturing practices (cGMP) are those conforming to the guidelines recommended by relevant agencies. Those agencies control the authorization and licensing of the manufacture and sale of food and beverages, cosmetics, pharmaceutical products, dietary supplements, and medical devices. These guidelines provide minimum requirements that a manufacturer must meet to assure that their products are consistently high in quality, from batch to batch, for their intended use. The rules that govern each industry may differ significantly; however, the main purpose of GMP is always to prevent harm from occurring to the end user. Additional tenets include ensuring the end product is free from contamination, that it is consistent in its manufacture, that its manufacture has been well documented, that personnel are well trained, and that the product has been checked for quality more than just at the end phase. GMP is typically ensured through the effective use of a quality management system (QMS).
AsureQuality Limited is a State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) fully owned by the government of New Zealand. The company's core business is food quality assurance with its services including certification, inspection, testing, and training. AsureQuality has over 1700 staff at over 100 locations throughout New Zealand. AsureQuality also has a joint venture partner, Bureau Veritas.. Bureau Veritas and AsureQuality have two joint ventures, BVAQ Australia and BVAQ SouthEast Asia.
Welder certification, is a process which examines and documents a welder's capability to create welds of acceptable quality following a well defined welding procedure.
Certification is part of testing, inspection and certification and the provision by an independent body of written assurance that the product, service or system in question meets specific requirements. It is the formal attestation or confirmation of certain characteristics of an object, person, or organization. This confirmation is often, but not always, provided by some form of external review, education, assessment, or audit. Accreditation is a specific organization's process of certification. According to the U.S. National Council on Measurement in Education, a certification test is a credentialing test used to determine whether individuals are knowledgeable enough in a given occupational area to be labeled "competent to practice" in that area.
Product certification or product qualification is the process of certifying that a certain product has passed performance tests and quality assurance tests, and meets qualification criteria stipulated in contracts, regulations, or specifications.
Listing and approval use and compliance is the practice of installing and operating safety-related products and materials in accordance with to minimum performance conformance testing requirements. The conformance could be for a certification listing or for an approval that has been issued by an organization that is accredited both for testing and product certification. Such organizations include Underwriters Laboratories, FM Global, or the Deutsches Institut für Bautechnik (DIBt).
The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) was an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with the public mission of accelerating adoption of robust, interoperable health information technology in the United States. The Commission certified electronic health record technology (EHR) from 2006 until 2014. It was approved by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as an Authorized Testing and Certification Body (ONC-ATCB). The CCHIT Certified program is an independently developed certification that includes a rigorous inspection of an EHR's integrated functionality, interoperability and security using criteria developed by CCHIT's broadly representative, expert work groups. These products may also be certified in the ONC-ATCB certification program.
Oeko-Tex is a registered trade mark, representing the product labels and company certifications issued and other services provided by the International Association for Research and Testing in the Field of Textile and Leather Ecology.
Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) is used in the Aerospace or automotive supply chain for establishing confidence in suppliers and their production processes. Actual measurements are taken from the parts produced and are used to complete the various test sheets of PPAP.
"All customer engineering design record and specification requirements are properly understood by the supplier and that the process has the potential to produce product consistently meeting these requirements during an actual production run at the quoted production rate." Version 4, 1 March 2006
A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard.
The South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) is a South African statutory body that was established in terms of the Standards Act and continues to operate in terms of the latest edition of the Standards Act, 2008 as the national institution for the promotion and maintenance of standardisation and quality in connection with commodities and the rendering of services.
British Approvals Service for Cables is an independent accredited certification body headquartered in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. Here, the organization's dedicated testing laboratory also operates which is believed to be the largest of its type in Europe. BASEC was established in 1971 and principally provides product certification services for all types of cable and wire, ancillary products and management systems within the cable industry. The organization maintains operations throughout the world including Africa, Middle East, America, Asia and Europe.
A First Article Inspection (FAI) is a production validation process for verifying that a new or modified production process produces conforming parts that meet the manufacturing specification detailed in technical or engineering drawings. Typically, a supplier performs the FAI and the purchaser reviews the report. The FAI process usually consists of fully testing and inspecting either the first part produced by the new process or a sample from the first batch of parts. First article inspection is typically a purchase order requirement of the purchaser for the supplier to complete. If the manufacturer doesn't have the in-house capability or if the purchaser requests, the first article inspection may be conducted by an approved subcontract supplier such as a dimensional inspection/metrology laboratory.
ASME NQA-1 is an industry consensus standard created and maintained by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The latest edition was issued on June 30, 2022 (NQA-1-2022). However, the most commonly used version in the supply chain is NQA-1-2008 with the NQA-1a-2009 addendum. Any organization submitting an application for a new design are using the NQA-1-2015 edition. This is the case because these are the versions endorsed by the NRC.
NSF is a product testing, inspection, certification organization with headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan. NSF also offers consulting and training services worldwide.
A certificate of analysis (COA) is a formal laboratory-prepared document that details the results of one or more laboratory analyses, signed—manually or electronically—by an authorized representative of the entity conducting the analyses. This document gives assurances to the recipient that the analyzed item is what it is designated to be, or has the features advertised by the producer. The design and content of a COA may be based upon a set of requirements identified by the lab, by regulatory-driven requirements, and/or by standards developed by standard developing organizations. The COA is used in a wide variety of industries, including but not limited to the agriculture, chemical, clinical research, food and beverage, and pharmaceutical industries.
