| What is Accreditation? |
Third-party attestation related to a conformity assessment body conveying formal demonstration of its competence to carry out specific conformity assessment tasks. (ISO 17000:2004) |
| What is certification? |
Third-party attestation related to products, processes, systems or persons. (ISO 17000:2004) |
| How does one recognize accreditation? |
WFSCaccredited Certification Bodies (CBs) can be recognised by the use of the WFSC accreditation mark. The accreditation can also be verified directly from WFSC either through their website or from info@wfscouncil.org |
| How can I check a company's certification? |
You can either visit the certification body website or contact the certification body direct. |
| Is it mandatory that an Accreditation Body be a member of International Accreditation Forum? |
No. |
| Can a certification body provide consultancy? |
No, a certification body is not permitted to do consultancy |
| Is the certificate issued by a WFSC accredited body for my organization or product going to be recognised in other countries? |
Decision for recognition of certificates issued by accredited bodies by any country is left to the respective countries recognition process. All potential clients of accredited bodies should verify this if required. |
| What would be cost of accreditation? |
The cost involves items an application fee, assessment fees, ongoing surveillance fees, travel, etc. Please refer to terms and conditions or contact WFSC for details. It is normal for WFSC to provide an estimate prior to the accreditation process. |
| What is the time period taken for the entire accreditation process? |
The application are registered by the WFSC admin and taken up for review on priority. A lead time of one to two weeks can be expected before the first response is received. The accreditation process involves a document review, pre-assessment, final assessment and accreditation. At each of these stage comments and improvement decisions may be raised by the WFSC assessment manager or the assessment team. These must be responded to at the earliest by the applicant body. Considering the number of parties and processes involved it is difficult to put an exact time frame for all accreditations. However, WFSC may be able to provide approximate time frames on a case-to-case basis. 'How to get accredited' is a good informative document on this. |
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