We are proud to inform you that we reacted fastest in the league of LIMS Service providers who have implemented NABL guidelines enforcing Unique Lab Report Number for every laboratory.
What is the change:NABL in its circuclar dated August 14,2018, NABL instructed labs to adhere to following major points
- There shall be 18 digit ULR (Unique Lab Report ) number on all the reports issued by Conformity Assessment Bodies (CAB)
- The number shall appear on all the reports issued by testing and calibration facilities for their accredited scope of labortories
- Format of ULR will be as per given prescribed format by NABL
- First Six Digit will be accreditation certificate number issued by NABL to the CAB (eg. TC2345, CC1234, RC5678 etc.)
- Next two digits indicate calendar year {18} for 2018
- Next one digit indicate lab number if the CAB is multi location have more than one lab for the accredited scope
- Next eight digit (10th till 17th) will be running number starting from 1 and continuing till year end. The number will restart from 0000001 every year on 1st of Jan.
- Last digit (18th) will be indicating scope of the Lab (partial or Full)
Stated Objective of NABL:To align with Government of India e-Marketplace GEM to facilitate online procurement of services required by various government and public sector organisations.
Unstated but benefits expected by NABL : To cleanse the reporting system and offering traceability to Manufacturing and customer concerns of Laboratories. NABL has in fact decided to develop mechanism to be offered on its website where customers of labs can actually verify whether the ULR received by them from Accredited labs are genuine.
The single move is going to instill a larger confidence in customers of the labs for the value they expect from laboratories in return of the cost spent for getting calibration certificate or testing report.
Impact on Laboratories : It has large impact on Laboratory current operational and business model:
- Current Business Model based on importance of NABL Accreditation Logo which means Auditors and renewal of accreditation was based on audit of only Jobs that had Logo is no more relevant.
Nearly all jobs of calibration laboratory are to be issued with ULR number unless the job is out of scope. And Auditor scope of review are all certificates issued with ULR number whether full or partial in scope irrespective of whether the deliverable has NABL logo or not.
For testing lab also, ULR is important for almost every sample where the laboratory have accredited with parameters all in scope or partial in scope.
- laboratories require a extensive governance and control mechanism in its operation.
- It does require more documentary evidences, transparency in its procedures and deliverables to corroborate the reported data and hence more overhead on housekeeping.
- It needs to store all the records of raw and derived data (Observation, calculations and final result) that are used for the purpose of preparation of report or certificate.
- Customers could no longer be mislead, if the lab deliverable is uniquely identified with ULR then, they would know that the received deliverable from lab have gone through all laid out process and guidelines.
Impact on LIMS:
- LIMS shall know whether the report/certificates are within the scope or out of scope as the last digit shall be automatic.
- LIMS shall generate a ULR either at the time of job registration or at the time of report generation.
- Prevent backdating of ULR as that will make labs not conforming to the ISO-17025 guideline.
SCC have implemented these changes in its product and labs are taking advantage of solution without worrying about increase overhead cost. SCC SmartCalibration LIMS provides all documentary evidences, governance as per ISO17025 and commercial coverage of a Calibration lab in totality.
SmartCalibration is a software solution of choice for many commercial calibration labs, who opt for neat and cleaner way of operations and wish to stay compliant to ISO17025.
Remember whatever you do by hand on paper can be done using the software as well because SmartCalibration is designed for your lab and can be configured or changed to follow practice.
If you own or operate one such lab and wish to improve quality. reduce turn-aroud and improve productivity, do feel free to contact us for online demo.
Related Pages: Know more about our LIMS solution
NABL Logo a must on accredited scope report and decision rule requirement
