|
Happy New Year 2025! Our January OWM Newsletter highlights our recent metrology publications and weights and measures training in 2024, as well as our plan for a new series of “Info Hours” and combined RMAP training events in 2025. Through such activities, we are proud to continue to serve hundreds of our customers and stakeholders from the weights and measures officials across the U.S. states and territories to private industry and manufacturing sectors. We also feature the collaborative metrology PT and training activities with our international metrology partners from the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) and congratulate our colleague, Chuck Ehrlich, on his well-deserved retirement at the end of January 2025.
Katrice Lippa, NIST OWM Chief
 OWM Completes Pilot Test of a “Blended” Course on Retail Motor-Fuel Dispensers
In October 2024, NIST OWM completed a pilot test of a “blended” course on Retail Motor-Fuel Dispensers (RMFDs) thanks in large part, to Paul Floyd, Director of Louisiana Weights and Measures, and a select group of his experienced staff. A blended course is one delivered using a combination of different instruction formats. The NIST OWM Blended Course on RMFDs included a blend of instructor-led webinars, self-study assignments, a self-paced narrated PowerPoint, and in-person instruction.
 Legal Metrology: Maintaining Trust in Measurements
Without realizing it, metrology plays a big role in our daily lives. We buy groceries that are weighed or measured. Prepackaged products are weighed or measured during production. Medicine at the pharmacy is measured to make sure it contains the right dosage. We buy fuel for our car at the gas station. Most people blindly trust the scale at the supermarket or the gas pump at the gas station.
Best Practices for Uniform Unit Pricing: An Update to NIST SP 1181 and NIST Handbook 130 Regulations
To help shoppers everywhere get the best value for their money, the NIST Office of Weights and Measures (OWM) convened a unit price working group comprised of regulatory officials, industry, academia, and consumer group stakeholders and produced the 2015 NIST SP 1181 Unit Pricing Guide “A Best Practice Approach to Unity Pricing” as a recommended layout and design of unit price labels.
|
NIST OWM and KEBS: Building Metrology Capacity for the RMOs
NIST OWM and the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) are currently conducting an interlaboratory mass comparison as part of a larger, multifaceted mass metrology training program being developed by Dr. Ombati Nyangau, OWM’s NIST International Associate and KEBS’s lead mass metrologist. The results of this comparison will assist the KEBS mass laboratory with improvement actions that will be integrated into its mass proficiency testing (PT) program and overall metrology training portfolio.
|
|
 |
Coming in June 2025: The Combined Regional Measurement Assurance Program (C-RMAP) in Portland, Oregon
Every five years, NIST OWM gears up to host a Combined Regional Measurement Assurance Program (C-RMAP) training event with a state host with all six RMAP regions in attendance at once. The 2025 C-RMAP will be held in Portland, Oregon, on June 1 – 5, 2025, with the Oregon Department of Agriculture and Director Steve Harrington as the host.
|
 Announcing the 2025 NIST OWM “Info Hours” Series
The NIST Office of Weights and Measures is pleased to announce the schedule for the 2025 Info Hours series. An Info Hour is a one-hour session that features current weights and measures, legal metrology, or documentary standard relevant topic while providing a forum for discussion and Q&A. It allows for networking with OWM staff and other subject matter experts (SMEs) in the weights and measures community.
NVLAP NIST Handbook 150-2 New Release
In October 2024, the National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP) released a revised version of NIST Handbook 150-2, which represents the technical requirements for the accreditation of laboratories under the NVLAP Calibration Laboratory Accreditation Program. This new release was announced and is available on NVLAP’s Lab Bulletins which is used to inform participating laboratories and interested parties of changes made to the laboratory accreditation program.
|
 2025 Editions of NIST Handbooks 44, 130 and 133
The 2025 editions of NIST Handbook 44, NIST Handbook 130, and NIST Handbook 133 are now available electronically in PDF and Word formats on the OWM website. Printing of the current editions is currently underway, and it is anticipated that they will be shipped to all new NCWM members in mid-January 2025.
 OWM Recognizes Proficiency Testing Coordinators of the 2024 RMAPs
The Laboratory Metrology program in OWM operates an ISO/IEC 17043 compliant Proficiency Testing (PT) program that assesses the effectiveness of the metrology training efforts for the state laboratory participants and the traceability of the state metrology laboratories to the SI through NIST’s measurement services. Participants of the PT program include federal and commercial laboratories across the U.S., in addition to state legal metrology laboratories.
 |
|
Chuck Ehrlich Retires from NIST OWM
Dr. Charles (Chuck) Ehrlich will retire from the NIST Office of Weights and Measures (OWM) on January 25, 2025, after 40 years with NIST and a 40-year career in legal metrology and international metrology standards development. Chuck began his career at NIST in 1984 as a staff research physicist and developed the first NIST leak calibration service, overseeing its application in the nationally important Three Mile Island reactor cleanup activities.
|
NIST Director Updates
We are sad to say goodbye to Dr. Laurie E. Locascio as the 17th Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Under Secretary for Standards and Technology for the U.S. Department of Commerce. As the NIST Director, Dr. Locascio also served as the Honorary President of the National Council on Weights and Measures (NCWM) for the past three years.
|
 |
|
Weights and Measures in the News
|
 |
|
Inside the Michigan Heffron Laboratory
Thanks to the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Heffron Laboratory, consumers who buy products by weight can expect to get what they pay for.
Fox2Detroit, By: Jack Nissen, December 18, 2024 |
|
