A lecture delivered to FON students

Employees of the Accreditation Body of Serbia (ATS) successfully continue to deliver lectures indented for all interested students when they try to inform them about the importance of accreditation, conformity assessment and entire quality infrastructure. Radivoje Nikoličić, Assistant Director of Development and Quality, gave a lecture to the students of the Faculty of Organisational Sciences, University of Belgrade (course of study: Quality Management) at the premises of the Faculty of Organisational Sciences on 1^st April 2015. The importance of the work of an accreditation body and performance of conformity assessment activities was stressed during the lecture on the subject of “Place and role of ATS at national and international quality infrastructure level”.

The opening address was given by Gordana Pejović PhD, Assistant Professor at the said Department, when she thanked ATS for its continuous support provided to students that would someday be able to make their contribution in this field as employees of accredited conformity assessment bodies (CABs) or as ATS assessors/experts. The lecture was also attended by Ana Trajković, Assistant at the Quality Management and Standardization Department at the Faculty of Organisational Sciences.

Radivoje Nikoličić, ATS, with FON students

The importance of product conformity assessment was highlighted at the very beginning, including marketing of safe products as a task and aim set by all countries to protect health and safety of citizens. Moreover, the role of accreditation as part of the quality infrastructure was stressed during the lecture including the information about the key players in this field in the Republic of Serbia and the work of EU international organisations (EA, CEN/CENELEC/ETSI, EURAMET).

The accreditation procedure was presented in detail from the submission of the application for accreditation and finally to the award of the accreditation certificate together with the Scope of Accreditation. Students also had a chance to learn why it would be important to use the accreditation symbol and combined ILAC MRA and IAF MLA marks in certificates and reports issued by accredited conformity assessment bodies (CABs) to indicate their accreditation status and prove their technical competence to clients.

Multifold benefits of accreditation to all interested parties were emphasised – accredited CABs, government, economy, consumers and traders, but in order to achieve full benefit from accreditation it is necessary to become a full member and to maintain this full membership status in the European and international organisations for accreditation and ATS status as the signatory to the multilateral agreements (EA MLA, ILAC MRA, IAF MLA).

The key turning points for the development of the accreditation system in the Republic of Serbia were explained and these included the following: conformance of the accreditation system in the Republic of Serbia with the requirements of ISO/IEC 17011, membership in the said international organisations and hence signing of the multilateral agreements, whereas turning points for conformity assessment in the Republic of Serbia included the Law on Accreditation and Law on Technical Requirements for Products and Conformity Assessment. The Republic of Serbia has an accreditation body that fulfils all the said requirements as confirmed by the ATS capacities in terms of the number of granted accreditations and number of employees, hired assessors and technical experts, ATS structure and set-up, ATS management system documents, and the ATS role in the region given the number of ATS granted accreditations when compared with the number of accreditations granted by the accreditation bodies in the region.