With the commissioning of a second reference spectrophotometer, the CRM calibration laboratory at Starna Scientific now has a resource that is usually only available to National Reference Laboratories
Starna CRMs are produced in an environment accredited to both ISO Guide 34 and ISO/IEC 17025, as now required by Ilac (International Laboratory Accreditation Co-operation) for reference material producers - Starna was the first producer to be awarded Ukas accreditation for this activity.
In highly regulated and controlled environments, analysis of the process can show areas where it is advisable to duplicate critical path components.
In this case these are the primary reference materials to which traceability is established - Starna Scientific maintains its own, traceable primary references - and the reference spectrophotometer used for the measurements.
Duplication of the reference instruments not only allows production and calibration work to continue while essential maintenance is carried out, it also provides a valuable in-house cross-validation tool.
John Hammond, technical manager for analytical products at Starna Scientific, said: "We offer a five-day recalibration service for our certified references - and for those from other suppliers if they meet our quality standards - and this new instrument will ensure we can maintain this exceptional service level to our customers.
"Maintaining and extending our accreditation as a producer of CRMs is partly a matter of accumulating traceable, validated measurement data, and having two reference instruments gives us even more confidence in our products, confidence that our customers can have in the quality of their own measurements."
