No doubt you’ve read through the ISO/IEC 17025, ISO 15189, and ISO 17020 standards plenty of times and you’ve seen an increased emphasis on risk management. Some of these requirements have been in place for 5 years! These requirements mean you look at risks in a more formalised and strategic way. Having a risk …read more »
written by Maree Stuart The things labs test and calibrate don’t magically appear out of nowhere. Somewhere along the line, there is a sample taken. Many labs aren’t in charge of sampling. That’s something left to clients, clinical staff and production line staff. Just because it’s somebody else’s responsibility does not mean laboratories can ignore it. …read more »
written by Maree Stuart No doubt you’ve read through the ISO/IEC 17025, ISO 9001, or ISO 15189 standards plenty of times and you’ve seen an increased emphasis on risk-based thinking. We’ve written articles previously about risk management and discussed how the requirements need you to look at risks in a more formalised and strategic way. Since …read more »
written by Maree Stuart Oh Alan, I would give everything, not to be like him. Would you want to be Alan Joyce right now? He’s the butt of many jokes, including this one from The Shovel: With QANTAS seen to be the stand-out performer in poor customer service and failures to respond to …read more »
written by Maree Stuart Being in a lab isn’t always easy, especially when there are decisions to be made. According to prospect theory, if two equal options are put to a person but one option is described in relation to gains and the other is described according to losses, the person is more likely to …read more »
written by Maree Stuart As we head into the silly season we are delighted to present: The MAS Management Systems 12 Days of a Lab Christmas! On the eleventh day of Christmas a key supplier informed us of serious quality issues with their products This is probably one of the least expected things that could go …read more »
written by Maree Stuart As we head into the silly season we are delighted to present: The MAS Management Systems 12 Days of a Lab Christmas! On the ninth day of Christmas, the air conditioning in our lab died If you’re in Melbourne right now, then dealing with hot temperatures hasn’t exactly been a recent issue. …read more »
written by Maree Stuart As we head into the silly season we are delighted to present: The MAS Management Systems 12 Days of a Lab Christmas! On the eighth day of Christmas, two of our key staff resigned To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, losing one key staff member is a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness. …read more »
written by Maree Stuart The world can be a risky place! With claims by Mark Bouris who says Australia runs the risk of “going overboard” and pushing interest rates too high next year, and ongoing risks to our personal data and privacy through data breaches, we’re besieged by warnings about the present and the future. Those …read more »
written by Maree Stuart We’re starting to get that sense of a new year right around the corner. The Melbourne Cup has been run and won. Hints of slightly warmer weather are appearing. Unless you’re in Melbourne and then you have our sympathies and hopes for warmer temperatures from now. And the sounds of Christmas are …read more »
written by Maree Stuart You might remember the famous case where David Bowie and Queen took Vanilla Ice (or Robert Van Winkle as he is legally known) to court for copyright infringement of their song ‘Under Pressure’. Van Winkle had quite clearly sampled the classic bassline to Under Pressure. However, he famously insisted that the two …read more »
written by Maree Stuart When we think of risk and risk management, we often first ponder how we get rid of it. Indeed, in the COVID-19 Pandemic, many Australians, and governments, have shown themselves to be a very risk-averse lot! In contrast, some have shown themselves to be really tolerant of health risks in comparison with …read more »
No doubt you’ve read through the ISO/IEC 17025 standards plenty of times and you’ve seen an increased emphasis on risk-based thinking. We’ve written articles previously about risk management and discussed how the requirements need you to look at risks in a more formalised and strategic way. Since it’s not prescribed HOW this should happen, some …read more »
For those of a certain demographic, this title will conjure up a British television sitcom based in Grace Brothers Department Store. But perhaps you heard those words just today, when you went into a clothing store or supermarket. In last week’s article, we examined the theories of three quality thinkers – Deming, Juran and Crosby. …read more »
Cybersecurity is big business and big news. Many more of us are in hybrid arrangements, working from home and in the office. Businesses have had to re-think not just how they work but also the security of their systems. The healthcare sector was under enormous pressure during 2020. As if this wasn’t enough, ransomware and …read more »
In an ideal world, everything would run smoothly with only very small bumps in the road – enough to keep us interested but not enough to cause major headaches. However, as we all know, the world is seldom ideal. We all have ways to deal with problems that arise in our personal lives. But what …read more »
Risk management. It’s a hot topic right now. There are 1.3 billion (that’s 1,330,000,000) entries on risk management that appear in a simple Google search. Risk can be anywhere, from the minute we wake up in the morning until our eyes close at night. We inhabit a world full of risk and uncertainty and have …read more »