What is Accreditation Body?

Accreditation body is an independent assessment bodies on recognised standards to make sure their impartiality and competence. Public can have more confidence on the calibration and test results, inspection result or the certification provided.

Accreditation bodies are formed in different countries with the main purpose of ensuring that conformity assessment bodies are subject to review by an authoritative body. This is aimed at improving the acceptance of goods and services across nationwide, building a mechanism to promote foreign trade by eliminating technologies obstacles. The authoritative body are International Accreditation Forum (IAF), which managed management systems, products, services, personnel and other similar programmes of conformity assessment, while International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) are for laboratory and inspection accreditation.

Besides that, IAF is also helping to establish Multilateral Recognition Arrangements (MLA), between its accreditation body members which reduces risk to business and its customers by ensuring that an accredited certificate may be relied upon anywhere in the world.

The famous IAF accreditation body members are like UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service) from United Kingdom, IAS (International Accreditation Service) from United State, DSM (Department of Standard Malaysia) from Malaysia, etc. The certification from all the IAF accreditation body member are equivalent and recognize internationally.