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Complete Article from Edition 41 APG eNewsletter
Article written by Thomas V. Coyner, President, Analytical Products Group
Taking the Gloves Off
The commercial environmental testing industry is a tough market. It is
highly competitive and most of the competition is based on price. As
APG has reported previously, this is mainly the result of our focus
on laboratory accreditation to "level the playing field" for all
commercial laboratories. When customers see that all that is
required to meet state requirements is NELAC or state accreditation
then all labs are the same and only price is important. Accreditation
may or may not have improved data quality but it has certainly
destroyed the ability of good laboratories to compete on quality.
APG believes that it has found a way for good laboratories to regain
the competitive advantage that they deserve. The current USEPA
and NELAC PT systems have developed into a lowest common denominator
that is recognized as only removing extremely poor laboratories from
the system. These programs use an artificial system for laboratory
evaluation which does not measure the real world performance of
the laboratories being monitored. However, a true performance
evaluation system, as opposed to a PT program, based upon
consensus results and complete data reporting provides real
value in terms of establishing the relative quality of participating
laboratories. Therefore, APG has chosen to provide its participating
laboratories with a complete laboratory performance evaluation program
instead of the minimal reporting required by NELAC and used by every
other NELAC approved PT provider.
The APG Advantage
The APG Advantage Reporting System was specifically designed to
provide excellent laboratories with the ability to demonstrate
their ability to provide high quality analyses for customers
and potential customers. We have provided a graphical reporting
system that:
- allows a clear demonstration of excellence
- tracks performance over time by analyte
- clearly separates the excellent laboratories from the merely accredited laboratories meeting minimal requirements
Once customers "see" the true quality of APG participating laboratories,
laboratories that cannot demonstrate equivalent performance are at a
significant disadvantage.
Prove It
It is fair to ask if we can really do what we say we can
do. The obvious answer is to see for yourself by asking
for a demonstration of the power of the Advantage Reporting
System. The final question, however, is can your customers
understand the Advantage that we provide. The answer is yes.
APG demonstrated the power of Advantage to a group of Fortune 500
companies represented by the CHWMEG organization in November
of 2005. Following the meeting, APG was selected as the PT
provider to the Global Laboratory Evaluation and Monitoring
Program (GLEMP). This is a non-profit association of industrial
users of commercial environmental laboratories who will use
the Advantage Reporting System to select and monitor the
quality of their laboratories on an on-going basis. APG is
working to provide our customers with a true value-added
evaluation program. Most importantly, we are providing the tools
for our customers to be successful.
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