Calibration Laboratories Challenges - Service Quality

Abstract

This paper is written from the perspective of either third party commercial or an internal calibration lab. While it is recognized that some companies communications go through multiple departments (both for the customer and for the calibration service provider), these experiences and solutions may also be applied to any lab needing outsourced calibration services. It is imperative that both the customer and the vendor take equal responsibility for communicating with each other to ensure complete customer satisfaction. Both the customer and vendor should be familiar with the requirements of ISO/IEC 17025:2005 section 4.41 Review of requests, tenders and contracts, 4.61 Purchasing services and supplies, and Section 4.71 Service to the customer. This paper addresses common frustrations between customers and their vendor’s, it also explains the relationship between different factors and processes involve in delivering the best quality services. Moreover, it also offers valuable suggestions to overcome the current and future challenges that are faced by calibration laboratories. Apart from this, certain solutions are also offered in this manuscript for closing various gaps that affects the service quality by integrating services gap model to the real scenarios and also explains how this model can help us to deliver best services within the calibration, inspection and testing laboratories.