Too Many Quality Standards, Too Little Quality - Is it Too Late to Change our Direction?

摘要

This paper presents a strategy that embraces the international reliance on ISO/IEC 17025 [1] as a competence standard for calibration and testing laboratories, while utilizing ISO 10012 [2] as a conformance standard to evaluate calibration programs. This reliance would lead to the elimination of all other metrology oriented quality standards in the United States. The author provides objective evidence of several areas in which the existing ANSI/NCSL Z540-1-1994 [3] standard is lacking and in which its existence actually serves to deprecate the quality of work performed. Also addressed is the commitment level required from the both the manufacturing and metrology communities, and the objectives, which will have to be achieved in order to make this evolution a reality. The failure to embrace the concept of streamlined quality standards in this community will serve as yet another nail in the coffin of our nation's industrial base.