The future of our quality management system

Since the foundation of myStandards GmbH, the quality management system has been an important part of the company. It has become a living tool that supports all employees in their work.

For some months now, we have been providing information on our homepage about the structure and background of our quality management system. A total of five articles with different topics from the area of quality management & reference materials have been published. The last article in this series concludes with a summary and an outlook on the future of our quality management system.

With a newly developed manufacturing process, we produce calibration standards for chemical analysis instruments and thus meet the worldwide demand for material-specific reference materials in the geological field. Our customers require reference materials for the calibration of their measuring systems, the evaluation of measuring methods, the verification of the accuracy of analytical results and internal quality control. In addition to important properties such as homogeneity and stability, the quality of our nano-pellets is also a key factor. In order to be able to guarantee the highest level of quality of our nano-pellets, we have since been working on the introduction, implementation and maintenance of our own quality management system (QMS).

By coordinating all processes and structures in the QMS, the work of myStandards GmbH is considerably facilitated. Core processes for analytics and certification have been defined and further processes, such as production and research & development, have been specified and optimized. Our procedure for the certification of reference materials and the workflows developed for this purpose in the QMS can be applied to all reference materials produced in the company. The QMS thus serves as the basis for an intended accreditation by the DAkkS.

The requirements for accreditation are laid down in official, internationally valid ISO standards. Roughly speaking, these are intended to ensure that all calibration standards worldwide are produced to uniform and comparable standards and meet the criteria of the ISO quality standards. For reference materials producers, ISO 17034 is the relevant standard.

Various organizational roles are important in the implementation of our QMS: from the top management, who is taking accountability for the effectiveness of the QMS, to the quality management representative, who takes the actions to implement and maintain the QMS, and the auditor, who critically reviews the system, to the process owners, who ensure that all processes provide the intended results through corrective and improvement actions, and who are each responsible for the overall planning, implementation, management and control of a process. Most importantly, all employees of myStandards GmbH are supported and accompanied by the QMS in their daily work. Only if everyone fulfills the requirements of the QMS and works conscientiously, the quality can be maintained, improvements can be achieved, and we can reach our ideal. Every employee is part of the implementation. Only if all employees give feedback, make suggestions for improvement, work according to the documents of the system, and contribute to the realization of the quality policy, the system will work!

The accreditation and the continuous improvement of the quality management system for the further development of myStandards GmbH are our central next steps. In addition, we want to further increase the transparency of our QMS and inform about the certification process of our reference materials. For this purpose, we have developed a concept for the extension of our homepage during the last weeks. In addition to the existing pages, there will be a separate section for quality topics on the homepage in the new year, which will bundle information on quality control, quality assurance and quality management.

“As the quality management representative of myStandards GmbH, I am proud to be part of such a great and innovative team that supports each other, responds positively to changes and keeps our quality management system alive.”
Lena Stölting, responsible for Analytics & Quality Assurance at myStandards GmbH

More articles from our series on the quality management system: