Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

The NIST Quality System for Measurement Services: A Look at its Past Decade and a Gaze toward its Future

Published

Author(s)

Sally S. Bruce

Abstract

As the National Metrology Institute (NMI) for the United States, NIST, formerly the National Bureau of Standards, has provided measurement services, both calibrations and reference materials, for more than 100 years. Through these services, our customers have benefitted from our measurement capabilities and expertise in many areas, including amount of substance, dimensional, electricity and magnetism; ionizing radiation; mass and related quantities; photometry and radiometry; thermodynamic; and time and frequency. NIST’s customers have also had access to some of the lowest measurement uncertainties available and a dependable way to establish traceability to the International System of units (SI) [http://www.nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/si-units.cfm]. In response to the signing of the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA), NIST first established an institution-wide quality system for the measurement services 10 years ago [http://www.bipm.org/en/cipm-mra/objectives.html]. NIST’s Quality System for Measurement Services has advanced the quality of service and measurement we provide our customers by fostering an environment in which NIST management and staff to work towards continual improvement in the development and delivery of NIST measurement services. This paper describes NIST’s Quality System for the Measurement Services and its relevance to international standards of quality, such as the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) 17025 standard and ISO Guide 34 [http://www.nist.gov/nistqs/]. It also provides a history of this quality system and a glimpse of future goals for improving its implementation.
Proceedings Title
NIST’s Quality System for the Measurement Services: A Gaze at Its Past Decade and a Look Towards Its Future
Conference Dates
July 15-18, 2013
Conference Location
Nashville, TN
Conference Title
Conference: 2013 NCSL International Workshop and Symposium

Keywords

CIPM MRA

Citation

Bruce, S. (2013), The NIST Quality System for Measurement Services: A Look at its Past Decade and a Gaze toward its Future, NIST’s Quality System for the Measurement Services: A Gaze at Its Past Decade and a Look Towards Its Future, Nashville, TN, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=913859 (Accessed March 29, 2024)
Created May 8, 2013, Updated January 27, 2020