Part of the process of developing a test is to conduct extensive research to ensure that it is discriminating and repeatable. Discriminating means that it will show different results for oils that provide the characteristic being tested and those that dont. Repeatability means that different test centers will receive the same results if they perform the test on identical samples.

Oversight on tests does not end with their adoption. Labs continue testing reference oils and reporting their results to oversight committees. The purpose of this activity is two-fold: first, to check that the test centers are conducting the tests correctly; and second, to allow detection of industry-wide trends.

Such after-adoption testing has long gone on at the Coordinating European Council for the Development of Performance Tests for Fuels, Lubricants and Other Fluids, the leading fuel and lubricants test organization in Europe. But the organization, known as CEC, recently made a change that modernizes this effort and should make it much more effective. Through Test Monitoring System Online, test centers can upload results into a CEC database, and those results can be viewed online by other centers and members of the oversight committee.

Until now, testing was done in round-robin programs, which were intended to run annually but sometimes failed to do so. CEC officials say the new system should be more effective.

With the old system, there was little quality control on the individual laboratories, said Christopher Gray, statistical advisor at Infineum UK. Whatever results a laboratory submitted in a round robin would not prevent it from continuing to test other samples. Test monitoring provided a way of each lab continually analyzing its own performance and stopping testing if its reference data was poor.

As regards trends affecting all labs, previously, it could take one round robin to detect a problem, and another round robin to confirm it was a systematic effect. In practice, by the time that there was a sufficient body of information to demonstrate that an issue existed, it was too late to do anything about it.

Gray added that the online program was not easy to establish, particularly with a limited budget. After setting up the initial structure, it became apparent that dealing with all the issues thrown up by many different users from different countries was imposing a high day-to-day administrative burden. A lot of subsequent thought has gone into minimizing the amount of admin work and improving the user experience.

LubesnGreases commends the CEC for making that effort. Tests give structure and reliability to the industry. So much work goes into them, its worthwhile to ensure that they remain effective.