Standardisation crucial to local manufacturers, says ZABS

Mon, 28 Nov 2016 19:58:54 +0000

LOCAL manufactures have been encouraged to take standardisation seriously to promote and ensure quality products in their trading activities.

The Zambia Bureau of Standards (ZABS) head of marketing and public relations, Hazel Zulu, called on local manufacturers to tap into the bureau’s standardisation services.

Ms Zulu explained that this would ensure that production and industrial instruments used in trade were reading correctly to enable users know the accuracies they were operating at.

“The bottom line is that calibration improves the accuracy of measuring devices used in business and trade. And it is also important to note that accurate measuring devices improves product quality,” she said.

She said the bureau had in the third quarter of 2016 recorded a decrease of about 14.9 percent of standardisation certificates.

Ms Zulu said a total of 542 standardisation certificates were issued to various companies compared with 637 calibration certificates issued in the second quarter of 2016.

“The reduction in the number of standardized industrial instruments may have a negative effect on the level of efficiency and service delivery of various companies, particularly those that use instruments to conduct trade.

“We reiterate our call on industry and other institutions such as mines, hospitals and hotels that use various instruments in their day to day business to have them calibrated,” she said.

Standardisation is a form of quality assurance which ensures that industry can safely and reliably use instruments to get the accurate measurement results they need in production as well as in trade which will result in improved accuracy, efficiency and service delivery.

Some of the instruments that ZABS is able to calibrate include weight scales, cold rooms, ovens and pressure gauges. Others are measuring tapes and digital thermometers.