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Challenges with Lab Accreditation Requirements? You're Not Alone
Aug 18, 2020
AMRL and CCRL lab accreditation requirements have grown by over 300% in the past few years. Every equivalent new regulation or requirement means additional investment of time and money for accredited labs within engineering services firms.
Most firms are challenged with the cost of maintaining R18 Quality Manual standards and infusing them within their daily processes. In fact, there was only one firm out of the 50 firms we interviewed that said they didn’t have significant work 2-3 weeks before an audit. Basically, 98% of firms indicated that they spent significant time and money ahead of an audit. Some quotes of what we heard:
“It’s a hellish process ahead of an audit'
and
“This is the most hated three weeks of my year.”
What we heard most was that most firms want to make auditing processes proactive—no longer one-off with automation. One client opined that you don’t really have an R18 Quality process if it’s not being conducted on an ongoing basis as part of your standard operating procedure.
We found many companies rely upon some hybrid of manual and systemic record keeping. This ultimately left those preparing accreditation materials looking in file cabinets, across different databases or document storage solutions. Also, the variance of process from lab to lab was inconsistent and time consuming. Ultimately, creating the chaos ahead of the accreditation audit.
We want to provide a solution to help customers be more prepared prior to an audit. With this preparation, auditors spend less time on site and firms spend less time preparing—which leads to an immediate ROI. In addition, the mountain of time and money you can save in systemic executing and tracking across verification and exams is incredibly valuable. This is particularly true given the labor pressures on seasonal workloads versus standard workloads.
Lastly, and most importantly, we can help companies save hard dollars by reducing the time the auditors are onsite performing audits at each lab. When auditors are on site at a lab this can cost firms thousands of dollars a day.
So, if your firm is looking to reduce the pain of R18 Quality Manual tracking and documentation along with a systemic approach to automating much of the lab accreditation requirements, check out the newest module from Agile Frameworks, MetaField Accreditation.
MetaField Accreditation is a dedicated module, accessible from the MetaField Home Page. Use the module to create, store and manage all lab accreditation documentation and records. Through this module, accreditation functionality is organized around three key areas: Document Storage, Training & Evaluation, and Equipment.
Download MetaField Accreditation data sheet >