Accreditation, Certification: What is the difference?

Certification is written assurance by a third party that a product, process or service conforms to or complies with specified requirements (e.g ISO 9001)

Accreditation is the procedure by which an authoritative body (accreditation body) gives formal recognition that a body or person is competent to carry out specific tasks (e.g. tests)

Laboratories can be audited and certified to an international management systems standard called ISO 9001. This standard is widely used in manufacturing and service organisations to evaluate their system for managing the quality of their product or service. Whilst effective as a management evaluation tool, ISO 9001 does not evaluate the technical competence of a laboratory. This means that the evaluation of against ISO 9001 does not assure you or your customers that the test, inspection or calibration data are accurate and reliable.

Throughout the world, many countries rely on Laboratory Accreditation as a means of independently evaluating laboratory competence. Unlike ISO 9001 certification, laboratory accreditation uses criteria and procedures specifically developed to determine technical competence. Specialist technical assessors conduct a thorough evaluation of all factors in a facility that affect the production of technical data. The criteria are based on an international standard called ISO/IEC 17025 (or ISO 15189 for medical laboratories), which is used for evaluating laboratories throughout the world.

For more detailed information: ILAC brochure