Now a days we come across lot hype about Laboratories, Calibrating agencies boasting that they are so Quality Conscious and are accredited by NABL towards their Quality Controlling activities. This type of hungama is also there among the Industry .

But in reality neither the calibrating agency which is authorized by NABL to do the on site calibration and issue the certification with NABL logo nor the customer who is subjected to such a calibration are not following the basic norms laid by NABL .

At times for want of a certificate with NABL logo many Industries approach scruples agencies who are authorized by NABL( to do the on site calibration)(God only knows the secret of how these agencies are accredited by NABL ) to issue the certificate without even doing the on-site calibration. The NABL accredited lab after getting the fee from such industries and issues the certificate with NABL logo without carrying the actual calibration. The pathetic story is that the NABL authorized lab neither has the qualified personnel nor the requisite proper calibrated instruments to do the job is being noticed.

In many cases neither the calibrated figures at the time of calibration tallies with the calibrated instruments readings in such cases the readings are being cooked up and the certificate is issued with another person’s signature who has not at all done the actual calibration. If such type of certification is being done how the products tested out of such a bogus certified agency can be called as a quality one when no quality is being adopted in the calibration itself? Will it not reflect the country’s image and will it not affect the NABL and the Industry which produces such an item, boast that it is quality conscious one?

A request to the NABL before issuing an accrediton to any one to look in to the aspect that the said organization to whom the NABL accreditation has to be bestowed is following the strict compliance of the guidelines of the NABL and whether they have adequate knowledge in the aspects of calibration with requisite educational background are to be looked in to by NABL authorities. Otherwise the very purpose of the NABL is being constituted will be a JOKE. People will loose the faith in such type of authorizations in the near future.

World is looking at us that how much cautious we are in the QC aspect front.
Hope the authorities will look in to all the above points and take stern action against erring institution since the NABL is created to be a watch DOG like other organizations like BIS etc.

Complaint Send to NABL, India but no action has been taken till 17th May 2010. Kindly go thro, The acknowledgement from NABL.

In reference to Complaint no. 12/2010 Inbox X
Reply
from [email protected]
to [email protected]
date Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 15:23
subject In reference to Complaint no. 12/2010
hide details Mar 18
Dear Sir,

I acknowledge the receipt of your mail dated 11.03.2010 regarding a
complaint against M/s Hitech India Equipments Pvt. Ltd., Chennai
Please note that the same has been registered and will be dealt with as
per NABL procedure.


Yours faithfully,


-sd-
Complaints and Appeals Officer
[email protected]

Certificate Number:C-0264 issue dated 02/02/2008 valid till 01/02/2010


Hitech India Equipments Pvt Ltd, a company which is situated in Chennai has been Audited for Re-certification for Force and Hardness.

The Actual Calibration procedure followed by Hitech India Equipments Pvt Ltd is as follows, (which is different from the written Procedure)

The calibration engineer sometime take the any one of the Proving ring / Master Test Block (for hardness) available (as adequate number of and the required Proving rings are not available) and reach the destination.

He will take the readings and the paper will be handed over to the office for Data Sheet entry to issue the certificate.

The person who enters the reading in the MS Excel sheet for the purpose of certificate issue will correct all the observed readings (kindly note that all readings were odd and all the readings will be subjected to cook up) to get the correct uncertainty and after ensuring the same, will write another sheet to replace the one given by the calibration engineer not only to cheat the auditor but also the customer as many of the readings fall outside the limits. The original sheets where readings were taken will be destroyed and Certificate will be issued to the customer.(Customer also is not keen to know the details because of want of certificate for the purpose of Audit)

The above procedure only can be followed up and Hitech India Equipments Pvt. Ltd can never change due to the following reasons:

It is the normal practice of Hitech India Equipments Pvt Ltd to issue certificate without doing the actual calibration as Trained manpower is less and there is only one dedicated engineer, Mr.Sathyanarayana who is not preferred by hitech to send him till customer feel that the problem is of very serious nature and can be solved only by Hitech not only to increase the Calibration/AMC charges but also to retain the customer. This is the strategy followed.

Many times certificates were issued prior to calibration by cooking up the readings whether the customers insist (for the same giving reasons as TS Audit) or not as many times readings have never tallied due to improper calibration.

School pass outs and driver were used for calibration without giving any valid training.

Temperature was never monitored at any site as thermometer is not being carried along with by the service engineers and there is only one thermometer available which is also kept hanging in the Director – Calibration's room from a nail in the office to show the same at the time of audits.

Levelling of equipments also were not being done as there is not enough sprit levels and it is too difficult also as most of the equipments sold by Hitech India Equipments were having 4 points for levelling instead of 3 point levelling used internationally.

In the Hardness Testing also, the spacing between the indentation is not at all considered and the required number of Master Test Blocks were not procured at any point of time like proving rings. More over all are instructed either not to make use of the Test block or to take only two or three readings to avoid the consumption/purchase. If you check the no. of clients calibrated for hardness and the number test blocks used it can be easily found out.

Inter-laboratory calibration Certificate was bought from the SM Engineers, Pune without even sending any instrument to them.

Whenever Proving Rings were sent for calibration, dial gauges were not considered for calibration and were not calibrated at all

No check sheets or specs. were carried by the calibration engineers during their visit to the Client's site for calibration.

Many clauses were not addressed in the manual.

Documents were not controlled including Quality Manual.

Xerox copies of Standards were kept, which is against Law.

Records were being cooked up at the last minute.

Calibration also being done from Coimbatore branch office by the employees of coimbatore although Certification is only for Chennai Office.most of the times prooving rings were used without spherical balls and pressure pads.

An employee of coimbatore branch got severe hurt in the process and was not taken care of by Hitech India Equipments PVT Ltd.

No one knows the importance of spherical ball and pressure pad being used along with prooving ring till it was indicated by me and

In the case of Statutory and Regulatory Requirements also the organization fails as there is no subscription to either ESI, PF for the 25 employees as even the appointment order is not given to anyone although most of them are working for more than 4 years to evade from the above apart from cheating the IT dept. There are evasions in the IT and Sales Tax also.

And unfortunately the Auditor who has come for Audit has not taken any of the above into Consideration and the Trainee Auditor has also joined only on the Next Day by around 11.00 Hrs.

Also during the witness audit conducted on the first day at Jerusalem College of Engineering, the Auditor was sitting away from the UTM & Hardness Testing machines, watching the process of calibration being carried out from a distance. Readings were taken by the calibration engineers and shown as written in the sheet that has already written readings (prepared prior to audit after feeding in excel sheet and verifying the uncertainity within levels to cheat the Auditor).

A week before the Audit, Jerusalam engineering college was visited (on Saturday and Sunday after taking special permission telling them that the equipments will be calibrated at free of Cost for the purpose of witness Audit) by the Calibration engineers to assess the machines. The readings of UTM has been found to be not tallying at all even after repeated efforts for 2 days and hence already prepared readings were taken along with the calibration engineer in a paper to the calibration site used for writing at the calibration site.

More over Mr.P.N.Gopal, CEO and Mr.T.S. Ramaseshan, has balmed an auditor named Mr.Anil stating that inspite of taking bribe(silk saree+some) from Hitech India Equipments PVT Ltd, he has given lot of trouble during the Audit.

As an auditor I know that the clients usually try to give compliments stating as it is due to love and affection but will blame if any NC is given by the Auditor. It is very unfortunate that clients never try to understand that the process of audit itself is Fact Finding and not fault finding and should be taken as an opportunity for improvement.

But it is the attitude of Hitech India Equipments PVT Ltd that those who indicate their short coming are their enemies and I am also an enemy to them just because I have indicated all the short coimings as I am also a Lead Auditor worked with a International Certification Company. I have come out of hitech India Equipments Pvt Ltd on March 4'2010 as I do not want to be part of the cheating group who is not following any Statutory & Regulatory Requirements.

This is for your Information and necessary Action Please.