ANAB and PRI Establish Agreement for Nadcap Accreditation

The ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB) and Performance Review Institute (PRI) have established a cooperative agreement to provide accreditation for materials testing laboratories seeking to meet the requirements of Nadcap and ISO/IEC 17025, the international standard for testing and calibration laboratories.

Nadcap is an aerospace industry-managed approach to establish requirements for accreditation, accredit suppliers, and define operational program requirements. The result is a standardized approach to quality assurance and reduction of redundant auditing throughout the aerospace industry.

Before the Nadcap program was implemented, each aerospace company audited suppliers to the company’s own requirements. Because the aerospace companies’ respective requirements often were comparable, duplicate audits of the same suppliers likewise often were redundant, increasing costs without adding value. In July 1990, PRI was incorporated to administer the Nadcap program.

Under the ANAB-PRI agreement, customers will be accredited for materials testing to both Nadcap and ISO/IEC 17025 requirements. PRI technical assessors will assess laboratories using the current five-year Nadcap assessment cycle. Both ANAB and PRI will review assessment results, and on acceptance of the assessment results by both organizations, PRI will issue a Nadcap certificate and scope of accreditation and ANAB will issue an ISO/IEC 17025 certificate and scope of accreditation.

“We believe the laboratory community will welcome and benefit from having an option to reduce audit time through the efficiencies of a joint assessment program,” Roger Muse, ANAB Vice President of Business Development, said.