Purchase equipment or hire 3rd party

You will need to make that decision based upon your business plan, staffing, resources, capacity to perform, qualifications, and enterprise skill-set.

Outsourcing is done in accordance with the business plan needs of the enterprise.

I sent you a private message regarding this. I have a lot of expertise in this field.

Which method inflate your pocket?

We used to manufature lighting fixture of general design and now we are expanding our business. We need photometric data be included on our product catalogue and once the datas are on them we would be done withe instruments. So need to know that do we really need to purchase or hire a third party.

1. Get pricing from three manufacturers for the equipment you need.

2. Find out from each if they will buy the equipment back from you (for "used" resale) when you are finished using same.

3. If they will not buy back consider that at best you will get a return of about 30% of your investment when you go to dispose (sell) of the equipment.

4. Locate three equipment rental facilities and see if they have your required equipment for rent, get the rates, figure out how long you would need the equipment.

5. Calculate the cost of your time to test and produce documents if you do the work yourself or the cost if you pay an employee to do the work.

6. Get pricing from three photometric data contractors to perform the testing and produce the required data for each fixture type.

Consider the 6 items listed above and go with the least expensive, taking into account any variables not mentioned above.

The way your question is phrased leads me to this question:

You say "... photometric data at an earliest so that I dont miss out on contracts." This makes me think there may be some specifications by the purchaser. Are there any requirements in their spec's about testing? Independent testing lab required?

Even if this is the requirement, it would be wise to test your equipment in-house first. It is a bad feeling to get stuff rejected from an independent testing house after you paid for the testing and the results. Be certain your product will meet or exceed specified luminous efficacy, luminous flux and luminous intensity.