TESTING IN INDUSTRY

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30822, 6 August 1965, Page 16

TESTING IN INDUSTRY

Ensuring High Standards The National Association of Testing Authorities in Australia was an idea achieving astonishing results, the director of the Canterbury University Industrial Development Department (Mr T. H. Scott) said on his return from a tour of inspection. N.A.T.A. worked on a system of registering or licensing authorities—Gov ernment agencies, local bodies, marketing organisations, and even individual firms—to test a huge variety of apparatus and materials.

Mr Scott said it might be thought that an independent Government agency was the most suitable to ensure that products were up to standard. In Australia’s experience N.A.T.A. involved manufacturers so deeply in the scheme that they became in tensely interested, jealous of high standards, and keen to ensure that everybody “played ball."

The initial effort was to improve apparatus, laboratories. and staff of the testing authorities themselves, and then to co-ordinate their efforts in ensuring high standards in industry and other fields. Testing authorities were. In ''ffect, private nonprofit - making companies which were helped by both State and Federal Government grants, but a great deal of money came from the users. Flexibility was another advantage. Mr Scott said that an authority might be licensed to undertake a great' range of testing over a long period or it might be licensed to act for one specific job. Voluntary “The chief point is that the scheme is wholly voluntary, participants do not feel they are restricted, and results are so good that the National Standards Laboratory of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is farming out work to these authorities,” said Mr Scott. New Zealand might b» reaching a stage where such an organisation would be useful, Mr Scott said, but this in no way implied criticism of the Standards Institute. In New Zealand practice the effect would be to have the institute fix standards and an association would authorise other organisations to test these. His own department had frequently been asked to prescribe and undertake such tests. Mr Scott said that New Zealand had much to bo proud of in its standards procedure. Australia, for instance. had nothing like the standard mark as a symbol of quality ' for all proven products.

South-east Aslan Trade.—A selling trade delegation from New Zealand is expected to visit South-east Asia in October or November. The Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association is circulating members who are likely to be interested.