A Review of Metrological Supervision: Towards the Common Understanding of Metrological Traceability in Legal and Industrial Metrology

Metrology, standardisation, and conformity assessment are used by businesses to optimise production quality, monitoring, and control of production processes. Accreditation, traceability assurance, and metrological supervision are closely related, and all these elements are integral parts of quality infrastructure. Their effective implementation supports sustainable development and social welfare, and facilitates trade. The concept of metrological traceability is also important for fundamental and applied research when results from various systems and obtained in different laboratories are compared. The accredited institutions meet established standards and are competent to carry out different conformity assessment tasks, such as testing, inspection, or certification. These institutions work in the field of ensuring the uniformity of measurements in various industrial areas, and will also perform type approval and verification procedures in legal metrology to confirm the compliance of measuring instruments with metrological requirements. This review paper presents a comprehensive analysis of metrological supervision procedures that enable deeper understanding and highlights the differences in legal and industrial metrology, ensuring reliable results for solving measurement traceability problems.