What is conformity testing?
Conformance testing is testing to determine whether a product, system or just a medium complies with the requirements of a product specification, contract, standard or safety regulation limit. It refers to the issuance of a compliance statement to customers after testing. Examples are: Pass/Fail; Positive/Negative; On specs/Off specs, etc.
Generally, statements of conformance are issued after testing, against a target value of the specification with a certain degree of confidence. It is usually applied in forensic, food, medical pharmaceutical, and manufacturing fields. Most QC laboratories in manufacturing industry (such as petroleum oils, foods and pharmaceutical products) and laboratories of government regulatory bodies regularly check the quality of an item against the stated specification and regulatory safety limits.
Decision rule involves measurement uncertainty
Why must measurement uncertainty be involved in the discussion of decision rule?
To answer this, let us first be clear about the ISO definition of decision rule. The ISO 17025:2017 clause 3.7 defines that: “Rule that describes how measurement uncertainty is accounted for when stating conformity with a specified requirement.”
Therefore, decision rule gives a prescription for the acceptance or rejection of a product based on consideration of the measurement result, its uncertainty associated, and the specification limit or limits. Where product testing and calibration provide for reporting measured values, levels of measurement decision risk acceptable to both the customer and supplier must be prepared. Some statistical tools such as hypothesis testing covering both type I and type II errors are to be applied in decision risk assessment.
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