The popular standards ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 are updated

On 15 September of this year, the updated environmental management system standard ISO 14001 will come into force, whereas the new quality management system standard ISO 9001 will become effective one week later, on 23 September. ISO 9001:2015, which is the most popular quality management standard in Latvia and worldwide, certifies to customers, that a company cares for constant quality of its products or services. Several significant changes are integrated in the updated standard, including risk approach in formation and development of quality management system, identification of opinions of interested parties, involvement of senior management, so that the standard is easier to use in service industry companies, etc.

The main difference is greater focus on management processes and less documentation. It is planned, that the new standard will not contain references to documented procedures and notes, instead focusing on information to be documented, thereby allowing an organization to choose the most suitable method for documentation of quality management system.

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Pilot project of accreditation time schedule

LATAK works actively on improvements of accreditation procedures. One of the planned innovations is an accreditation time schedule, which is currently specified in the framework of pilot project. LATAK does not want to cause additional burden to conformity assessment bodies – entrepreneurs; therefore, LATAK timely informs about planned changes in the terms of examination of accreditation applications.

LATAK informs, that this is a pilot project, so the terms in the accreditation time schedule are only indicative and are subject to changes until 1 October 2015. LATAK indicates, that the planned changes will not influence cooperation activities between LATAK and conformity assessment bodies, compared to the existing procedures. Only the terms of separate stages of accreditation process are specified, thus ensuring transparency and integrity during the accreditation process.
More significant changes are planned in a period of one or one and a half years, when LATAK will have integrated an informative support system, ensuring information exchange between LATAK and conformity assessment bodies through the electronic environment.

15.06.2015

LATAK documents have been changed

LATAK informs that changes have been made to following LATAK documents:

• LATAK D.008-14/06.2015 „Accreditation procedures” (added one clause and amended the definition of nonconformity);
• LATAK D.045-02/06.2015 „Accreditation of Conformity assessment bodies for notification purpose” (added reference to a new regulation, removed additional accreditation application form);
• LATAK D.007-08/01.2015 „Proficiency testing in Latvian National accreditation system” (added ILAC-P9:06/2014 requirements, proficiency testing requirements attributed to inspection institutions where applicable);
• LATAK D.030-14/06.2015 „LATAK accreditation criteria and list of mandatory documents” (updated documents including ILAC-P15:06/2014 and IAF MD 9:2015).

Documents LATAK D.008-14/06.2015, LATAK D.045-02/06.2015 and LATAK D.030-14/06.2015 are available on page ‘Documents’ – ‘General documents’.

The document LATAK D.007-08/01.2015 is available on page ‘Documents’ – ‘Testing and calibration laboratories’ and/or ‘Medical laboratories’.

Date of publishing: 29.06.2015

Accreditation – guarantee for safety of services

Accreditation combined with standardization, conformity assessment bodies and certain amount of regulations provides trust and conformity guarantee in compliance with desires of involved parties. Latvia as a Member State of the European Union and a country, which has achieved a certain level of development, is obliged to comply both with regulated requirements and with requirements and desires that are set by the increasing demand for qualitative service. If medical devices and pharmacy sectors are regulated for a long time already, for example, information safety (protection of patient data) is an area, which is under development yet along with informatisation and digitisation.

Each year on 9 June the World Accreditation Day is celebrated. The topic in this year is “Accreditation as support for ensuring health and social care”.  Provision of services in appropriate amount and quality is expected also in the areas of health and social care services.

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