Poll question: Which part of managing your calibration program takes the most time for you or your team?
What part of that task creates the most delay or frustration for your team?
In regard to sending gages out, it isn’t just the sending the gages to the vendor. It is background coordination. Making sure production either has a backup gage to use or an alternate process. If no back up gage, how quickly can we get the gage back. Do we need a process change while it is out, and if so, we need forms and signatures and permissions. Then getting the gage there, coordinating shipping or drop off and pick up. Communicating with the vendor on their schedules. “sending” a gage out sounds simple but there is a lot of invisible work that most don’t see.
The biggest time sink for me is finding the gages across our 29 building campus
· Performing internal calibrations.
· Reviewing and filing calibration certificates.
We need the ability for inspectors on both the production floor and in the inspection lab to calibrate plug gages and other attribute gages as needed. Since purchasing 10 full licenses is not practical, it would be helpful to have a standalone calibration module that can operate independently while still updating and synchronizing with the main gage management system.
Access to the calibration module could be user-based and controlled through security groups, allowing us to determine which inspectors have calibration privileges. Ideally, the licensing could allow up to five calibration modules to operate independently of the main license, giving inspectors access where needed without requiring a full software license at every workstation.