Gaining competitive advantage in personal dosimetry services through ISO 9001 certification

Full text: In Malaysia, the harmonization of dose monitoring for almost 12,000 radiation workers is assigned to the Secondary Standard Dosimetry Laboratory of Malaysian Institute for Nuclear Technology Research, SSDL-MINT. Established in 1980, SSDL-MINT is responsible for improving personal and workplace safety by providing high quality personal dosimetry services. It is important to demonstrate that the performance of personal dosimetry meets recognized standards, to ensure radiation doses to individual workers are within the safe limits and to verify compliance with dose limits. Concern on the quality of personal dosimetry service began to be expressed in 2000. The concern led to the ISO certification, which brought an unprecedented effort characterized by high degree coordination, proper documentation and well trained of personal dosimetry operators. These huge efforts resulted with certification ISO 9002:1994 by the SIRIM International QAS Sdn. Bhd. in January 2002. The adoption of these requirements for the ISO 9002 standard makes routine handling of the process easier, and increases the reliability and effectiveness of the services. This helps to increase the quality and uniformity of personal dosimetry. The revision of the ISO 9002:1994 to ISO 9001:2000 necessitated SSDL-MINT revising its quality management system. The work began in middle 2002, and by May 2003, SSDL-MINT has been upgraded to ISO 9001:2000. Certification to the ISO 9001:2000 demonstrates our ability to consistency provide service that meets the requirements of the customer and the regulatory authority. These includes: improved consistency of service / product performance and therefore higher customer satisfaction levels; uniformity in work processes across organizations; simplified and more uniform structure for quality documents; improved customer perception of the organizations image, culture and performance; reduced number of product and process non-conformances; greater employee empowerment to do work right the first time; improved productivity and efficiency, leading to cost reductions; more emphasis on correcting the 'root cause' of problems; improved communications, morale and job satisfaction and enhanced international reputation. This paper discusses the advantage of certification process in the quality assurance of individual dose monitoring in Malaysia. Achieving the ISO 9001 certification offers a proof of our commitment to quality and, as a benchmark, allows measurement of our progress for continual improvement of our business performance. (author)