The state of the calibration industry?

HITEK's Managing Partner, Martin Kulin outlines his views on the current state and future directions of the Calibration industry.

HITEK's Managing Partner, Martin Kulin outlines his views on the current state and future directions of the Calibration industry.

The choice of calibration suppliers is shrinking as many are closing down, overall the sector is shrinking and most HITEK competitors are shrinking.

Competitors cutting prices to get work, but in such away that there is no margin left and the quality of the service has down graded to below satisfactory.

Some labs are even charging more for return carriage than the actual calibration.

Ongoing high level of investment needed in equipment, standards, UKAS and ISO accreditations, IT, Communications and so on, is needed and this must be funded (HITEK total investment in the last 5 years is £900,000, including the latest addition a Wind Tunnel for Anemometer Testing).

It is all too easy for companies to simply stop getting instruments calibrated or have them checked less often as a cost-saving measure.

But what happens when someone is hurt, a client supply is sub-standard, or there is no evidence to quantify their product being better than the competitions? Many instruments can be cheaper to replace than to have calibrated and there is anyway a tendency to replace, not repair.

Ever-cheaper instruments tend to make people assume calibration must be cheaper too.

Quality Managers and purchasing manager feel obliged to buy on price and delivery.

But what about the long term cost to the client? Calibration is a boring issue and actually not widely known about - it should be 'on the radar' of many more people, not just Quality Managers.

Calibration gives confidence in the equipment, give customer confidence, provides better safety standards, provides employment, provides all-round creditability.

HITEK customers have instant 24/7 access to Calibration Results by accessing the HITEK web site and simply entering the serial number of the equipment concerned.

They can also print off their Certificates.

To complement this and uniquely, HITEK engineers are equipped with wireless broadband laptops providing a service so fast that during on-site tests clients can access results on the web site even before the engineer has left their building.

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