Risk-based thinking for chemical testing

As a result of the changes to the ISO 9001 in 2015, integration of risk-based thinking into the quality management system is going to be a new requirement in ISO/IEC 17025. Though the concept of risk should not be new to the testing laboratories as it has been implicit in the previous editions of ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC 17025 as well, there might be concern on how risk-based thinking could be introduced to their daily operations in a practical and effective way. As a means to address the concern, this paper recommends an initial process review followed by an ongoing risk management process. Besides, a number of potential risks were identified and ways to avoid them were also discussed. Furthermore, there were discussions on the implementation of the risk management process and how could the management make use of the outcome of regular assessments to explore opportunities for increasing the effectiveness of the management system, achieving improved results and preventing negative effects.