by
Hornet » Mon Dec 11, 2017 4:10 pm
markf wrote:
(reposted from gas chromatography forum since I have not received any response there)
We traditionally call the external service technicians once a year for maintainance and operational qualification of our equipment, GC, detectors autosamplers etc'.
I personally see it as a good practice in general and good preventative maintenance for sensitive lab equipment in particular.
Now a higher-up manager wants to know if this is absolutely necessary, and I, seriously, don't know an answer to that question.
Is there any manual that specifically states when external maintainance/OQ should take place?
Take in account that our analysis is ISO/IEC 17025 Accredited, is there any requirement in this standard regarding maintainance intervals?
Thanks in advance,
Mark
I have several GC and GC/MS methods accredited to ISO 17025 and i never, ever call external technicians for routine maintenance and rarely for extraordinary maintenance/failure, but it happens only if i cannot do it by myself.
Do you have a system suitability/maintenance procedure for your instruments?
You can write it up according to your experience and to valid sources, for example the maintenance schedule suggested by the producer of your instruments.
As long as the instrument can be calibrated, tuned, results are accurated (for example analysis of an interlaboratory comparison or reference material) and meets or exceeds the method requirement why would you need external service? It's just a loss of money.
I'm talking about GC and GC/MS...they are usually easy to maintain.
You can schedule for example: gold seal and liner check/change (maybe using DDT or Endrin breakdown), number of theoretical plates of your column, change in the slope of your calibration curve, change of pumps oil/oring, cleaning of ion source/detector, check/change of gas filters, leak check, etc.