17025 Accreditation and Impartiality

My company distributes and brokers electronics after running them through our counterfeit avoidance test lab. We've been told by a 17025 Lead Assessor that in order to become a 17025 accredited lab we need to seperate our lab into it's own business entity (a seperate LLC perhaps) in order to adhere to the impartiality requirements of 17025.

I've seen other companies do this where they made the distribtion and lab side separate companies, however in some of these cases they're both still under the same parent company. Is that truly impartiality then?
Wouldn't we be able to prove that results from our test lab have no bias or influence based on internally reconstructing our org chart for example?

Unless the lead assessor has some very specific worries about your management structure, which they should have explained, you don't need to form a separate company. Maybe they were unhappy with the risk assessment on impartiality, again, they should have explained.
Many labs are part of bigger organisations, who pay their wages, it's not uncommon.

Agreed with ISmith68. You don't have to, but you "shall" demonstrate your impartiality thru policies, structure, communication, continuous improvement etc.

Impartiality rests with the person, not with the process. I can say, promise, sign and swear all kinds of good whatever and still lie through my teeth and back stab ya with you never knowing it and paying me in the process while smiling and thanking me for being a nice guy and soooooooooo professional.

I was also told that we need to have a lead 17025 assessor within our facility. I'm not seeing this requirement either.

engineerblack00 said:

I was also told that we need to have a lead 17025 assessor within our facility. I'm not seeing this requirement either.

Click to expand...

The 17025 lead assessor you are dealing with is giving you bad information. I would be checking with the accreditation body he works with to see if they agree with his statements.