In Autumn 2019,  SMTL hosted  UKAS, the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, for our annual independent inspection.

Over a period of four days, two inspectors asked SMTL staff to undertake a variety of tests, observing whether they complied with our QMS (Quality Management System) and adhered to the requirements of ISO 17025, the international standard for testing labs.

The two inspectors covered the fields of physical and biological testing, inspecting a variety of paperwork, including testing projects, training records, calibration certificates and inter-laboratory proficiency tests.

This year the inspection was longer than usual because UKAS were also assessing SMTL's migration of their Quality Management System from ISO 17025:2005 to ISO 17025:2017.  This necessitated a complete revision of our Quality Manual and a number of Standard Operating Procedures, and took over 12 months to complete.  In addition UKAS also inspected testing to the new British Standard BS 661210:2018 Graduated compression hosiery, anti-embolism hosiery and graduated support hosiery which has now been included on our UKAS schedule.

The inspection went well, with the inspectors again complimenting SMTL on their management and control of testing.  They recommended that SMTL maintain their accreditation status and granted our accreditation transition from ISO/IEC 17025:2005 to ISO/IEC 17025:2017 in January 2020. 

SMTL's latest UKAS accreditation schedule is available to down load from the UKAS website (PDF download), and our UKAS certificate of accreditation (web link) is now also available electronically.

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