NABL releases guidelines for inter-laboratory comparison for calibration laboratories

Mumbai, October 27, 2021:

The National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) has released NABL 164: Guidelines for inter-laboratory comparison for calibration laboratories where formal proficiency testing programmes are not available.

The procedure specified in this guideline is for the calibration laboratories who are accredited and applicant to NABL.

Calibration laboratories shall participate in proficiency testing programme of accredited proficiency testing providers.

The guidelines stated that this procedure is be used only as an alternative in the absence of formal proficiency testing programs to meet the requirements of NABL 163.

The selection of reference laboratory, artifact and evaluation of performance etc. are critical as this procedure demands these activities from the participant laboratory.

The participating laboratory must prepare and communicate to NABL a programme outline containing details of the artifact/parameters to be calibrated and reference laboratory selected in the reporting Format-A, the guidelines stated.

NABL stated that the participating laboratory has to select a reference laboratory which should be either National Physical Laboratory (NPL)-India or another accredited laboratory having better calibration and measurement capability (CMC) than the participating laboratory in that particular parameter.

The laboratory shall ensure that the reference laboratory is preferably not under the same top management.

The artifacts used shall have excellent repeatability and stability to hold their calibration for the period of the activity.

The participating laboratory shall communicate the calibration results to NABL in Format A along with the calibration certificate for approval of the program before sending the artifact to reference laboratory.

After NABL approves the plan for program, participating laboratory should get the artifact calibrated from reference laboratory, analyze the results and calculate En ratio the as per the following and submit the results to NABL.

NABL has been established with the objective of providing government, industry associations and industry in general with a scheme of conformity Assessment Body’s accreditation which involves third-party assessment of the technical competence of testing including medical and calibration laboratories, proficiency testing providers and reference material producers. NABL mission is to strengthen the accreditation system accepted across the globe by providing high quality, value driven services. PharmaBiz