TY - CONF A1 - Koch, Claudia A1 - Asna Ashari, Parsa A1 - Mirtsch, Mona A1 - Blind, K. A1 - Castka, P. ED - Jakobs, K. T1 - Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Conformity Assessment: Insights from a Multinational Study T2 - Joint Proceedings EURAS 2021 - Standardisation and Innovation SIIT 2021 The Past, Present and Future of ICT Standardisation N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic has posed new and manifold challenges to organizations and their operations worldwide. Conformity assessment bodies (CABs), such as testing or medical laboratories, certification, and inspection bodies, are also affected by the associated disruptions. Their situation in this crisis is highly relevant, as CABs are essential pillars of the quality infrastructure: Their activities ensure that products and services meet requirements as defined in standards and regulations, thereby contributing to their safety and reliability. Considering the roles and functions of CABs in economy, health, and innovation, the question arises how CABs and their operations were affected by the pandemic and how they responded. To this end, we present the results of an international survey of 986 CABs of all types in Germany, the UK, Italy, and New Zealand. Overall, CABs reported on average a negative development of demand during the pandemic, facing restrictions in all countries. In addition, the pandemic had overall negative impact on the CABs’ investment and innovation activities. However, investments in digital infrastructure were increased as countermeasure, with CABs reporting an increased need for digitalization. Resources relevant to organizational resilience were available to different extents, affecting the speed of response to the challenges of the pandemic. The paper highlights and discusses results from in-depth analyses, which are relevant for policy makers and industry alike. T2 - 25th EURAS Annual Standardisation Conference – Standardisation and Innovation CY - Aachen, Germany DA - 05.09.2021 KW - COVID-19 KW - Corona KW - Crisis KW - Digitalization KW - Laboratory KW - Pandemic KW - Quality infrastructure KW - Conformity assessment KW - Resilience PY - 2021 SN - 978-3-95886-421-4 SP - 379 EP - 398 PB - Verlag Mainz AN - OPUS4-53815 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Koch, Claudia A1 - Ladu, Luana A1 - Asna Ashari, Parsa A1 - Blind, K. A1 - Castka, P. ED - Jakobs, K. ED - Kim, D.-h. T1 - Digital maturity in the conformity assessment industry: An explorative study from Germany T2 - EURAS proceedings 2022 - Standardisation and open source N2 - The services of Conformity Assessment Bodies (CABs) are essential to provide for trust in and safety of digital products and services by demonstrating that requirements from standards are met. Thus, it is vital that CABs are ready to fulfil their tasks also in the digital transformation, having the necessary capabilities and resources. Our study is the first to comprehensively assess the digital maturity in the CA industry and to provide some insights into the readiness of the industry to support and at the same time benefit from the digital age. To this end, we developed and implemented a digital maturity model tailored to the CA industry. In this paper, we present first results from our survey among 354 accredited CABs in Germany. With our research we contribute to better understand the digital transformation and maturation of CABs along distinctive stages. The findings suggest that the transformation process in the CA industry is just at the beginning, with the majority of CABs still in early stages of digital maturity. Also, only a few of them already exploit the latest digital technologies and applications like artificial intelligence, blockchain or big data analytics. Nevertheless, CABs regard digitalization as a big opportunity – for themselves and their industry. T2 - 26th EURAS Annual Standardisation Conference – Standards for Digital Transformation: Blockchain and Innovation CY - Glasgow, Great Britain DA - 08.06.2022 KW - Digital maturity KW - Digital transformation KW - Digitalization KW - Quality infrastructure KW - Conformity assessment KW - Conformity assessment body KW - Testing KW - Certification KW - Inspection KW - Laboratory PY - 2022 SN - 978-3-95886-446-7 SP - 253 EP - 272 PB - Verlag Mainz CY - Mainz AN - OPUS4-55065 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -