2025-11-13

Certified Quality – Not Just a Must

Certification of management systems and products was probably not the first thing in mind when OPSIS was started more than 40 years ago, but it quickly became clear that it was not enough to simply promise that OPSIS is solid and the products worked. Most of the customers expected someone else to certify this.

This “someone else” turned out to be several helpful testing institutes and certification bodies, which, however, imposed requirements on both the organisation and the products. It became a priority to get both the products and the management system in good shapes with respect to quality and other aspects.

Product Certifications

Where do you start if you want to be certified? It depends on what is required, what can be achieved, and what the technical and financial conditions allow. Accordingly, the paths to certifications vary between business areas and individual companies.

In the OPSIS case, the first test reports on the monitoring systems appeared as early as the late 1980s, just a few years after the company was started. However, it took a decade until a first official certificate was issued, by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA), comparing the OPSIS system with formal requirements and certifying that they were met.

The U.S. EPA certificate opened some markets, but there are other requirements in other markets and for other areas of use, and requirements are renewed and tightened over the years. In the OPSIS case, there have therefore been numerous new test reports and new or renewed certificates over the years. The most common certifications today are for compliance with European QAL1 requirements under EN standards. However, there are many more that are important in their niches or geographies, such as certificates issued by Chinese and Indian authorities, and certificates for the use of the monitoring systems on board ships.

Organisational Certifications

Most product certifications also require that the organisation manufacturing the products has a certified management system that, among other things, ensures quality control in the form of traceability and repeatability in manufacturing. A common way to achieve this is to introduce a quality management system that meets the requirements of the ISO 91001 standard. In the case of OPSIS, the first certificate for this was obtained in 1996. Since then, the OPSIS quality management system has also been developed and recertified as new versions of the standard have been introduced.

Having controlled quality is a need, and not just for obtaining product certifications. Customers of a company may also demand it, and they often demand even more from their suppliers. This is one of the reasons why a quality management system often is supplemented with a certified environmental management system (for example compliant with ISO 14001), a certified system for managing occupational health and safety (nowadays often per the ISO 45001 standard), and sometimes also a certified management system for information security (by example in accordance with the ISO/IEC 27001 standard). OPSIS also has such management systems and has obtained such certifications as well.

Not Just a Necessity

Some may think that certification is a necessary burden only, and it can certainly be a challenge to familiarise yourself with all the requirements and adapt your operations and products to meet them. But it is worth the effort, not only to be able to sell, but because it actually helps the company.

Thanks to certification, you can have a well-working production process ensuring that it is not by chance that an individual product is "good". You will know that that the products always meet the requirements set out in laws and other regulations, both in terms of functionality and product safety. It is also beneficial to have a work environment where the employees feel safe and IT systems that have been tested against intrusion and where customers can safely store their information. And much, much more.

In short: a certified company can be satisfied, confident and proud of its business. It helps the company to have good internal procedures, to be an attractive employer, and to be a reliable supplier of good products.

OPSIS Certifications

Feel free to browse all the OPSIS certifications on our website. You find a healthy selection of product certificates under our products page, and links to our organizational certificates are found on our “about-us” web page, where you also can read more about OPSIS as a company.