More and more producers submit their company laboratories to an assessment in order to acquire accreditation or abandons running an own laboratory and uses the services or an external laboratory, which posses an accreditation certificate..

Laboratory accreditation is an acknowledgement of the laboratory's competences to perform certain actions, by the certifying agency. Accreditation is given upon application of laboratories, after their evaluation and confirmation that they meet the specified requirements and conditions. The basis for meeting the requirements by the laboratory is the PN-EN ISO/IEC 17025:2001 standard "General requirements regarding the competences of research and calibrating laboratories".

Compliance of laboratory's operations with the requirements of the international PN-EN ISO/IEC 17025:2001 standard certifies about its competences. The requirements included in the standard, which regard the laboratory's management and the technical requirements, regard each laboratory, regardless of its type, size or structure and adopted methods. Meeting the requirements regarding the laboratory's management is equal to meeting the quality management system's requirements included in the ISO 9001 standard, but is not sufficient to confirm the laboratory's competences to perform specific tests or calibrations.

Thus, the second group of requirements of the PN-EN ISO/IEC 17025:2001 standard is related with the laboratory's technical competences and concerns: the laboratory's equipment, measurement consistency, the methods of testing and calibrating as well as their validation, personnel, premises and environmental conditions of taking samples, handling of the testing and calibration objects; ensuring the quality of results and presenting the results.
 
Confirming the competences to perform certain tests through accreditation, conducted according to world-wide adopted criteria is to ensure that the results are reliable, unbiased and credible and that they can by recognized not only at the state level, but also at the international level.
 
If conducting tests independently from the supplier and the recipient is not required, the producer may submit the products to testing at the company laboratory. Such a laboratory conducts the tests for the organization within the frames of internal production control. The company laboratory, which wishes to achieve reliability, credibility and precision of results should adopt the rules of the Good Laboratory Practice (GLP). Good Laboratory Practice specifies the requirements for laboratories regarding personnel, equipments, testing and recording methods. General GLP requirements - Good Laboratory Practice for a testing laboratory cover:

1. Properly trained personnel.
2. Standard analytical methods.
3. Schedule of frequency of taking test samples, the way samples are taken.
4. Proper equipment (controlled and calibrated at a regular basis).
5. Storage of the tests' results.
6. System of recordings

A laboratory without accreditation performs the same tasks as a accredited company laboratory, however, the producer may trust that the results acquired during the tests are reliable and repeatable.

On the other hand, independent accredited laboratories are competitive in the services' market as they possess a confirmation that they utilize the quality management system, are technically competent and are capable of producing reliable results.