Confidentiality
Organisations accredited for testing and certification of safety-related items typically operate in large facilities where many test submittors work to build test specimens and then go to test. Confidentiality is of importance to most submittors as well as the laboratories. Some manufacturers are extremely reluctant to share their proprietary process standards with any third parties.
In Germany's system, formulas and process standards are shared with the governmental accreditor: DIBt . DIBt uses the laboratories to audit the factories, but the audits are restricted to quality control tests of the finished products - not their chemical compositions or exact process standards. In North America, manufacturers are obliged to share their process standards with the laboratories, as there is no national accreditor that issues "approvals". This has resulted in the use of "fingerprinting" procedures, where manufacturers will permit their laboratory inspectors to conduct infrared spectroanalysis and other QC tests, in place of the process standards.
North American laboratories are usually private sector companies, though some of them are non-profit organisations, such as Underwriters Laboratories. There have been migrations of private sector laboratory engineers to manufacturers. Concerns over the sharing of confidential proprietary information are mitigated through confidentiality agreements.
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