Keeping your quality manual updated!
The best way
The best way to keep your Quality Manual updated is to schedule a small portion of your time and review the recurring items each month, once this area is completed, most changes will be few and far between. The biggest challenge with most labs is keeping up with their cal/check/standards and maintenance procedures, and rightly so. This involves everyone working as a team and doing their part while meeting hectic schedules, something that can be easily put off until a later date. This unfortunately creates time consuming work on your QMS and potentially can reduce quality and bring challenges down the road.
When to schedule your calibrations
Laboratories tend to put off as much QMS work to the slow or winter season; smaller labs can work this type of schedule in while others may not. Schedule your calibrations and maintenance procedures during times where you can be most effective in completing your procedures and staying up-to-date.
How to better manage your QMS
The solution for keeping your QMS up-to-date is teamwork, delegation and accountability. Laboratory equipment procedures are the things that have a specific frequency and continue to come up on a monthly basis in most laboratories. Each piece of equipment in the application can have an active user(s) designated to receive email notifications when a procedure is due. The user that’s assigned has several options to perform and enter the information for that procedure:
- Use the application procedure form within R18LabQMS (can be customized to meet your lab’s requirements).
- Include supporting documentation (file upload).
- Use an existing procedure already used by your lab which can be uploaded to the application.
- Attach calibration certificates to an application procedure form as provided by an outside calibration company.
Helpful tips
Manage Lab/view inventory/actions dropdown menu –> edit procedure
Editing Procedures: From the Inventory –> Add existing lab procedures, edit application procedure form, name, frequency, ID and standard IDs.
Other news
The R18LabQMS team has met with the development team and discussed the next round of upgrades and enhancement that should be ready to go late in Q2, Zack McKay will keep us updated on an upcoming blog post.
Please send all comments or questions to the R18LabQMS team!
– Gary Irvine