Testing Labs: The Outsourcing Dilemma Of BIS
Arun Swaminathan, Deputy Director General (Laboratory Operations) at Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) was oblivious to the ongoing celebration of World Standards Day around him. The ongoing seminar on “Niche Capacity Building by Government Organizations” had drifted his mind to the million-dollar question; Capacity Building v/s Outsourcing of BIS laboratory activity which had been occupying his mind for quite some time now. BIS had established itself as the renowned body dealing with standards and a pioneer and front-runner in laboratory testing activity. Galloping rate of increase in the number of samples to be tested due to increasing outreach of BIS however posed a serious challenge to the activity. Arun Swaminathan knew that the organization had to come up with some scaling strategy to improve the laboratory setup and subsequently the testing dynamics. Time and again he had thought of the evident challenges and the repercussions in the process of removing the resource crunch of testing laboratories. Outsourcing the activity appeared to be a viable solution to the problem, but the solution had its own challenges.
Last Updated on October 2, 2021