QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND PRACTICE - EVALUATION OF THE QUASIMEME QUESTIONNAIRE

A questionnaire was completed by 89 participating laboratories in the EU-QUASIMEME project to determine the current practices in Quality Management in marine chemistry laboratories. The results are discussed in relation to the developing QUASIMEME programme. Sixty-four percent of laboratories recognized that current quality management (QM) measures are inadequate and that there is a need for development of quality manuals and standard operating procedures to cover all procedures. A structured improvement in quality management and control in all areas of information gathering is necessary, from the storage, preparation and analyses of samples to the data recording and archiving. Comparison of reported precision of data (as indicated from the questionnaire) and the actual precision shown from the 1993 laboratory performance studies indicates significant differences implying that laboratories do not have a true measure of their real capabilities.