Product certification

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 (typically called 'certification schemes' in the product certification industry).A product might be verified to comply with a specification or stamped with a specification number. This does not, by itself, indicate that the item is fit for any particular use. The person or group of persons who own the certification scheme (i.e., engineers, trade unions, building code writers, government, industry, etc.) have the responsibility to consider the choice of available specifications, choose the correct ones, set qualification limits, and enforce compliance with those limits. The end users of the product have the responsibility to use the item correctly. Products must be used in accordance with their listing for certification to be effective.Certified products are typically endorsed with a certification mark provided by the product certifier. Issuance of a certification mark is at the discretion of the individual product certifier. ISO Guide 65 does not require the product certifier to offer a certification mark in the event that a certificate is offered. When certification marks are issued and used on products, they are usually easy to see and enable users to track down the certification listings to determine the criteria that the product meets, and whether or not the listing is still active.The International Accreditation Forum (IAF) has a listing of all recognized Accreditation Bodies whose accreditations to the ISO Guide 65 standard are deemed equivalent. From the IAF MLA informational page:Within the European Economic Area (EEA), the majority of products are required to be ‘CE Marked’ and will have the letter CE on them. It shows that the manufacturer or importer has checked that these products meet EU safety, health or environmental requirements; is an indicator of a product’s compliance with EU legislation and allows the free movement of products within the European market.North America's nuclear industry is exempt from mandatory certification. This has allowed situations leading to remedial work such as for fireproofing of electrical circuits (circuit integrity) between nuclear reactor and control rooms in the U.S. In this case, submitors were permitted to dictate not only their test procedures, but also to construct test specimens in their own facilities, prior to fire tests on the part of laboratories. The primary example of this situation is the Thermo-Lag scandal, which came about as a result of disclosures by whistleblower Gerald W. Brown to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as well as watchdog groups, members of US Congress, and the press.  This article incorporates text published under the British Open Government Licence: Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (8 October 2012). 'CE marking'. Retrieved June 29, 2017.