The Raimond Castaing Microanalysis Centre is an UAR : Unite d’appui à la Recherche (CNRS, UT3, INPT, INSA, UT) housed in the Espace Clément Ader.
The equipment installed enables users to respond to the increasingly demanding needs of materials analysis, ensuring rapid accessibility and assistance from experienced staff.
The aim of the Castaing Centre is to make available all the instrumentation and expertise in analysis at the highest European level. The Centre is open to all researchers whether academics or from the private sector working in the field of Materials and having specific needs in the multi-scale analysis of solid objects.
Our approach of quality management enables us to make optimal use of the human and material investment. With their extensive analytical experience, our staff perpetuates this attitude to ensure the development of the Castaing Centre.
It is in this framework that the challenges of the Castaing Centre have been identified:
* Encouraging each member of staff to acquire new skills;
* Ensuring that the Castaing Centre becomes better known over a larger area to boost opportunities;
* Maintain the equipment at the best level to meet the needs (cost, quality, time);
* Perpetuating the Castaing Centre and its activities: this involves valorising the two cornerstones i.e. the expertise of the staff and the quality of the equipment and infrastructure.
Our quality policy, beyond satisfying the immediate needs of the users, must encourage interactions between the various disciplines, various skills and the socio-economic stakeholders of the region.
I undertake to apply these policies, to invest the means necessary to attain the goals set and to ensure that the Unit responds to the requirements of the users, the governing bodies, and current standards.
This collective challenge can only be accomplished with the active participation of each of us, and the conformity and efficiency of the quality system.
Internally, we defined objectives that are annually reconsidered for the annual Director’s Review that presents the goals achieved in the past year and the targets for the coming year in order to ensure that we remain relevant and in constant improvement.
Antoine BARNABE
Dominique POQUILLON
Management of the UAR CASTAING
Toulouse, September 4, 2023
Since December 1, 2016, the center has been certified ISO 9001-2015 on its entire scope of activity, namely structural, microstructural and chemical characterization of materials down to the atomic scale. The Raimond Castaing Microcharacterization Center offers technical and scientific expertise in electron and ion microscopy to meet the needs and strengthen the potential of laboratories and socio-economic actors in the Occitanie region. All the requirements of the standard apply, with the exception of chapter 8.3 "design and development of products and services", since the center does not carry out any design or development activities, since it provides its expertise and equipment but does not develop new equipment or expertise. The renewal audit in early November 2022 confirmed this certification.
