The Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) has launched this year’s Inter-Laboratory Comparison program. Inter-Laboratory Comparison (ILC) refers to the evaluation of a participant laboratory’s performance against pre-established criteria by comparing the participant laboratory’s results to those of other participant laboratories in the same ILC round.
The program will be used to demonstrate competency and validate laboratories’ measurement processes for a particular measurement discipline. The development is aimed at supporting the ever-growing laboratory infrastructure in the country, in line with the UNBS mandate of enhancing competitiveness through standardization and conformity assessment.
According to ISO/IEC 17043:2010 Conformity Assessment—General requirements for proficiency testing—an Inter-Laboratory Comparison is the organization, performance, and evaluation of measurements or tests on the same or similar items by two or more laboratories in accordance with predetermined conditions.
In a statement Wednesday, the Bureau said this year (2023), ten (10) matrices will be tested, and these include maize flour, UHT milk, potable water, non-carbonated soft drinks, cosmetics, roasted coffee, paint, animal feeds, cement, and steel bars.
“This round of ILC exercise is highly recommended for all public and private commercial testing laboratories, including laboratories within manufacturing facilities, that fall under the scope of the ILC, irrespective of size.
This is because the ILC program provides a quality assurance tool to laboratories for comparing performance and taking necessary remedial action to facilitate improvement, with the aim of producing accurate and reliable test results,” reads part of the statement.
UNBS says that the ILC benefits above will in turn give consumers access to better, safer, and more quality products and services, given that the results are from credible laboratories.
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