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Accreditation and Quality Assurance: Journal for Quality, Comparability and Reliability in Chemical Measurement (v.5, #4)
The human factor in quality management by H. M. Ortner (pp. 130-141).
"Quality management is not just a strategy. It must be a new style of working, even a new style of thinking. A dedication to quality and excellence is more than good business. It is a way of life, giving something back to society, offering your best to others" (George Bush 1991).From this statement it becomes immediately clear that the human factor plays an eminent role in quality management. Therefore, some important relevant aspects of quality management are highlighted which are not so frequently discussed elsewhere. Various definitions and statements on quality lead to the fact that quality depends essentially on people. Some thoughts are developed on the Japanese quality culture which contributed essential impulses to the evolution of certain quality installations such as quality circles. The Japanese also developed a philosophy of quality, Kaizen, which is significantly different from Western industrial quality concepts. Kaizen works well in a slow growth economy, contrary to Western innovation which is more suited to the fast growth economy of the past.Some ideas on the quality control of top management as well as on the quality control of ourselves are expressed and it is shown how this is related to ethical principles. Every human society is as successful as: its intrinsic degree of honesty and righteousness, its degree of prevention of corruption and nepotism, and its readiness to work hard for personal advancement and for the sake of the community. Leadership, political or economic, is a special cultural effort – or at least it should be. But the striving for quality must be everybody's business in a company. It is the old 'pride of workmanship' which is greatly lost in today's industrial structures, and which is so absolutely important to again find satisfaction and contentment in our work. It is shown that the human factor in quality management, apart from all the necessary formal and institutional regulations, is of major importance, but very often neglected, especially in the present situation of over-rationalization. It is shown that dynamic equilibria do not only regulate chemical and biological systems but also operate in our psychic world. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to unhealthy extremes in the latter, e.g. to workaholics or neo-capitalism. Installations of total quality management such as systems, procedural and product audits are important facets of modern quality assurance. They are again closely related to human behaviour, as well as the procedure of company and laboratory accreditation. Finally the "Codex Hammurabi" shows that product liability was a clearly regulated issue in ancient Babylon, 2200 BC. This may be indicative of the fact that many new trends propagated by management gurus usually stem from a very old part of the wisdom of mankind but they are newly decorated and formed to modern slogans.
Keywords: Key words Human factor; Quality; Quality management; Top management; Product liability; Overrationalization
Practical considerations on the traceability to conventional scales by M. Buzoianu (pp. 142-150).
The basic concepts of traceability as they are defined by the Comité Consultatif pour la Quantité de Matière (CCQM) are difficult to apply to some chemical results. For instance, for some environments or chemical analyses measurement results are expressed in conventional units. Such units are realized on conventional scales relying on two fundamental pillars: reference materials and standard specification. The octane number of fuel or water turbidity measurements are typical examples of such units. Traceability concepts are discussed in terms of their practical applicability for turbidimetric analysis. Some outcomes on the validation of the metrological performance of turbidimeters and the comparability of turbidity measurement results are also presented.
Keywords: Key words Traceability; Conventional scales; Primary reference materials; Turbidimetry
EURACHEM – the first 10 years by A. Williams (pp. 153-155).
Part 1 covered the early development of EURACHEM and its formal establishment in July 1989. Part 2 covers the subsequent activities, describes the global developments that followed from initiatives taken by EURACHEM and also gives a description of the EURACHEM work programme including the workshops and seminars that have been organised and the EURACHEM guides that have been published.
Summary report on the CITAC 99 Japan symposium on Practical Realization of Metrology in Chemistry for the 21st Century, Tsukuba, Japan, 9–11 November 1999
by Masaaki Kubota (pp. 157-158).
Alphabetical index of defined terms and where they can be found Part III: R–Z by D. G. Holcombe (pp. 159-164).
This paper, the third of a series of three, presents the final part of an alphabetical index of approximately 1400 terms taken from various international official standards, protocols and guides. The terms listed are those encountered in the analytical sector, related to sampling, quality, conformity assessment, standardisation, measurement and related statistics. The definitions themselves are not included. The purpose of the index is to provide the user with a ready means of establishing whether a particular term has an official definition and if so where it is located. In doing so it makes location of officially defined terms more straightforward and so encourages their use. It also highlights those terms which are defined in several places, indicating the degree of equivalence between the definitions from the different sources. This third part of the index covers R–Z.
Keywords: Key words Index; Official definitions; Terms; Terminology