The Trials and Tribulations of a Nag Proficiency Testing: State Weights Measures Laboratory Experience over the Last 10 Years

摘要

This paper shares a number of personal lessons learned from participating in and coordinating proficiency tests and interlaboratory comparisons (PTs/ILCs) over the past ten years. In addition, the nine step process used by SEMAP, a regional measurement assurance program guided by the NIST Weights and Measures Division (WMD), to organize each annual PT/ILC will be described. The North Carolina Standards Laboratory, as one of the State Weights and Measures Laboratories, has been participating in PTs/ILCs since the early 1980s. In the early 1980s there were only one to two PTs/ILCs per year that were primarily initiated, coordinated, and analyzed by NIST (NBS at that time), Office of Weights and Measures (now Weights and Measures Division, WMD). In recent years, due to our NVLAP Accreditation, the WMD proficiency testing policy, and our joint PT/ILC quality system, our PT/ILC efforts are becoming increasingly formalized. The current system is coordinated more as a partnership among WMD, State Weights and Measures Laboratories and industry, with volunteers from each of the organizations performing the coordination and analysis, and WMD performing the final reviews. This paper presents an overview of the process and describes a number of improvements in the system that we have seen.