Workshop on Quality Assurance in Accelerator Facilities (invitation only)

March 2023

A focus forum to debate the application of “quality assurance” in the context of commercial synchrotron services:

Synchrotron light sources are making significant steps to providing “production level” commercial services as part of the industrial value chain. These are differentiated from ad hoc tailored/complex services by being offered on a routine basis and high-volume scale, at modest and competitive prices. Structural biology has made such an offer available for many years. Commercial exploitation though has so far not requested a quality approach to be integrated - perhaps as the clients are using the data at low TRL at drug discovery stage. However, as service provision, such as micro-computed tomography and X-ray powder diffraction, becomes both more widely available and exploited by commercial access with applications at higher TRL or being used in (e.g.) medically related work, an interest from clients in enhancing the services with quality assurance approaches is growing. The synchrotrons could position themselves ahead of this curve so as to be able to offer high quality services as a more logical part of the commercial value chain generally across various industry sectors.

This focus forum therefore has the objective to debate:

• the potential future needs for quality assurance from industry sectors
• the potential scope of quality assurance application at synchrotrons (e.g. procedures, equipment, monitoring)
• the pros and cons of applying quality assurance approaches to synchrotron services
• the costs and tools required as a blueprint to apply quality assurance
• are there practical and tenable applications in the real world to synchrotron techniques.

It will be also considered if a common effort for quality approaches could be effective, and potentially consider outcoming preliminary actions.