Four generations of quality: "measuring up"

PAR002_123 • 2 August 2021

There has always been, and will continue to be, collaboration between individual producers of RMs, and in many countries around the World, you will find national “mirror” committees reflecting and inputting regional decisions into their appropriate ISO representatives.


However, many years ago, RM producers recognised that the growing need by the analytical community for a number and variety of RMs as well as a need for the assurance of the quality of RMs called for collaboration at the international level. This has been achieved through REMCO, the Council Committee on Reference Materials of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which celebrated its 40th anniversary in2016. The evolution of this organisation and its conversion into the formal ISOTC 334—Reference Material continues in 2021 and beyond, and the key likely changes are detailed here.

1st Generation: the years between 1940 and 1975


The first serious effort towards international cooperation in the field of RMs was the Symposium on an International Reference Materials Program held in May 1969 at the then National Bureau of Standards (NBS), in Washington, DC, under joint sponsorship by the International Committee on Weights and Measures (CIPM) and NBS.


It was recognised that the need for RMs was greater than ever before in history and that cooperation on an international scale was needed to meet the World’s future needs. The Symposium recommended that the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) be asked to establish an organisational mechanism to gather and disseminate information on the availability of RMs, their characteristics and prices, coordinate information on the needs for standard reference materials (SRMs), identify potential suppliers of RMs, and coordinate information on potential RM certifying facilities.


Subsequent to the symposium, CIPM had to decline this role because the limitations of its charter and available resources allowed it to assume only the responsibility for SI base unit metrological SRMs. Given the lack of progress on this important topic, in November 1973 an adhoc International Meeting on RMs, under the sponsorship of the International Organization of Legal Metrology (OIML) was held at NBS in Washington, DC. Six international

organisations and 12 countries were represented. It was recommended that an independent International Commission on Reference Materials (REMPA)

be formed to define and gather and disseminate information on RMs as to their availability, ordering information, properties certified etc. and recommend a plan of action to increase their availability on an international scale.

A reference with a calibration certificate is not necessarily a Certified Reference Material!

by PAR002_123 • 2 August 2021
A reference with a calibration certificate is not necessarily a Certified Reference Material! Instrument qualification using CRMs from an appropriately accredited supplier is the first step towards data integrity. Indeed, the choice of CRM supplier is as important as the choice of CRM. A supplier’s Schedule of Accreditation should be checked to confirm that it includes the reference material to be purchased – it may not! Furthermore, it is now recommended that instrument qualification measurements are conducted over the operational range required for the analysis. A laboratory performing measurements over a wide wavelength or photometric range, will likely require several different CRMs to cover each instrument parameter. Starna Scientific - Celebrating 20 years of accreditation. According to ISO, a fully accredited CRM supplier should be accredited to both ISO 17034:2016 and ISO/IEC 17025:2017 Standards. In 2001, Starna Scientific became the first company worldwide to achieve ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation for liquid and glass CRMs for UV-visible spectrophotometry, and in 2006, we became the first and only supplier of spectrophotometry references accredited to both standards. All our CRMs are supplied with a certificate showing the traceability of the certified value to Standard Reference Materials (SRM) and a statement of the measurement uncertainty, as required by the ISO definition of a CRM. We are committed to the process of continuous improvement demanded by those standards and look forward to another 20 years as the preferred supplier to many of the leading pharmaceutical companies, instrument manufacturers and accredited laboratories worldwide.

Another great Starna article here

by PAR002_123 • 2 August 2021
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