E-News for November 2002
Greetings ALMA Members,
With the pressure to downsize labs, staffs are working longer hours to maintain services with fewer people. It is known that worker fatigue is a contributing factor for many accidents and the risk of injury increases as the amount of overtime builds. Health problems such as diabetes can be exacerbated when work schedules interfere with routines and cause workers to skip meals or otherwise deviate from dietary habits. As Lab managers, we have an obligation to monitor workers for signs of fatigue or health effects and to intervene before inattention or lack of concentration leads to an accident. We may not be able to avoid asking for the extra time and effort from our staff but might permit the worker to leave for a good meal and then return or even to take a short nap during an extended work session. Even 30 minutes of downtime can be meaningful if it is used effectively—forty winks in a dark office can provide sufficient rejuvenation to restore attentiveness to safely finish the extended work schedule. This is just good management—loss of another employee to injury only makes the situation worse.
Over the past decade or so, almost every lab has developed a formal documented quality system compliant with one of the ISO 9000 standards. While reflecting on the work put into this effort, you might be interested in comments on this standard made by one of the quality movement pioneers, Joseph Juran. In a recent interview (Quality Digest, August, 2002). Juran commented:
“A lot of companies believe that getting certified to ISO 9001 solves their quality problems. That simply is not true…. We’ve been taken in by the standardization people coming up with a standard that’s not at the excellence level but at the mediocre level. That’s inherent in the way the standards are set. There has to be consensus.”
The recent ALMA conference in St. Louis featured some excellent presentations on benchmarking, chemometrics, and outsourcing. As usual, the attendees made a strong effort to interact and network with each other—this is still the most friendly conference that you will attend. If you have never attended one of our conferences, give it a try next year in Pittsburgh on October 30-31. For more information, visit the ALMA website at www.labmanagers.org or call Miquela at 505-989-4683.
If you have any comments, cost saving suggestions, opinions, etc. let me hear from you .
Wayne