Expiry dates for general molecular biology reagents - (Aug/30/2007 )

The goal of ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is to harmonise the standards and the procedures.
It's sited in Geneva Switzerland and it's composed by representatives of standards organizations from about 150 countries.
Once ISO has setted a certain standard, it will be received by national institutions (e.g. in Italy it's UNI), translated and applied as law.

ISO9001 is mainly about "management systems" documenting what you do, so to some degree as long as you do what you've said or even have a nice set of documents which you appear to follow then you are ok. We also have to do some work to ISO 17025:2005 which is much more stringent and is designed for testing labs. The idea is that if your report has ISO 17025:2005 stamped on it then the customer knows that the lab and procedure has been checked and the results should be accurate. One of the problems is that it takes time and paper work (=money) to get ISO 17025:2005 and any changes to your protocol have to be reassessed ( more time and paper work = more money) . Tthe upshot of this is that we have better / more up to date assays which are not always used as they aren't ISO 17025:2005 yet.

Try this site http://www.simplyquality.org/jokes.htm

I've done this internal standardization in the past.
Some things to look out for:
Most reagents give 1 year or stated expiry date (whichever is sooner) (may be less than 1 year if it has short life - usually stated on reagent). Certainly the maximum you give any reagent you make yourself should be 1 year.
Give inorganic salts et cetera 2-3 years from when they are opened (not because they'll go 'off' but to prevent contamination).
Most acids and the like you can give a couple of years (and ~ 5 years unopened).

Here's something that catches most folk (idiots) out:
When you have stock solutions (eg 10X solutions), when you dilute them to working solutions the working solution shouldn't get another year. I've worked somewhere where the 10X solutions was going out of date so a 5X was made from it and it got a whole nother year and then when it was running out of life it got made up to 1X giving it another year.

It might just be easier for you to give everything a blanket 1 year (unless it is less) and buy in quantites that will last this or less. Sure sure that's more expensive but it will help you comply to ISO9001.