ICL's Quality Philosophy
A
calibration laboratory tests, adjusts, and certifies the indications of
measurement instruments used by the client's company in the manufacture of its
products or in the performance of its processes. The calibration laboratory’s role, therefore, is critically
important to the client company, because those values or measures indicated by
the calibrated instruments directly influence the validity of the client’s
tests and/or the quality of the client’s end product. Good, accurate values help the client achieve his goals;
erroneous values can precipitate disastrous results.
Accordingly, responsible, quality-conscious
companies go to great lengths to qualify and validate suppliers of
mission-critical services such as calibration.
Calibrations should be competently and
accurately performed by trained and experienced personnel, be well documented by
a concise, complete and easy to understand report, and the values disseminated
by the calibration should be directly traceable to a recognized standards body.
In short, calibrations should be performed by a competent laboratory.
It follows that a laboratory that is accredited
to an internationally recognized quality standard, by an impartial third party
accrediting organization, might reasonably be expected to be competent.
In 1994 ICL decided to pursue accreditation to
ISO Guide 25, 'General Requirements for the Competence of Testing and
Calibration Laboratories'. ISO Guide 25 was uniquely appealing among the quality standards
because it presented a formalized approach to designing and realizing, not only
a quality system, but a technically rigorous system of quality implementation.
Dedicating ourselves to comply with the spirit of the standard as well as
to the basic requirements helped us attain this accreditation in September of
1994.
The evolution of ISO Guide 25 into the more
rigorous and comprehensive ISO/IEC 17025:1999 presents challenges, but also presents
opportunity for growth and continued improvement of our internal quality system.
We believe that our 2001 attainment of accreditation
to ISO/IEC 17025, 'General Requirements for the Competence of Testing and
Calibration Laboratories', enables new clients to have confidence in our
abilities, and re-affirms the confidence of current clients.
To this end, we will offer to our clients, and
zealously guard our ability to:
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Supply the highest quality ISO 17025 accredited calibration services that satisfy our customers’ needs and the requirements of their quality systems.
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Assure absolute impartiality of testing and calibration services
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Maintain suitable facility, staffing, and resources to permit prompt, professional fulfillment of requested work
J. Jeff Kelly
Technical Director
