Accreditation: worth the trouble?

Since the late 1980s, much attention has been paid to the usefulness of ISO-9000 certification. At present more than 45000 companies and institutions worldwide have been granted an ISO-9000 certificate. In the field of quality assurance, however, the ISO-9000 series does not completely cover the aspect of traceability. Demonstrable traceability is a particular problem in quality assurance of products by chemical analysis. In this paper realisation of demonstrable traceability is discussed, using the field of gas analysis as an example. Attention is focused on the usefulness of accreditation for laboratories performing quality assurance analyses. The basic question is asked whether and, if so, when accreditation is worth the trouble in cases where demonstrable traceability is required.