The process of compliance typically includes assessing your products to:
- International standards
- Standards recognized through mutual recognition agreements for conformity (MRAs) or
- Harmonized standards of the European Union
While a few organizations are able to perform these complicated assessments in-house, in order to access markets worldwide, your product must be assessed by an ISO 17025 accredited laboratory. The accreditation body who issued the ISO 17025 for the lab should also be an ILAC MRA Signatory.
When your product is found to meet the technical requirements by testing, you may be able to issue a self-declaration of conformity or may need to obtain certification from a certified accreditation body.
A certification body may have its own compliance or quality mark that you can label your product with or will allow you to mark your product with the national mark of a country.
This is commonly referred to as “type approval” or “homologation”.