How Equipment Calibration Contributes to Quality Management

The role of equipment, devices, and instruments to produce a quality product is undeniably crucial for every manufacturing company. It becomes even more important to assure the quality of measurements of such devices through regular calibration both before and after the use of the equipment. It improves the traceability of equipment measurement accuracy if it is under the standard value limit.

In the era of technological advancements, precision is the requirement of increased importance. From power supplies to multimeters, signal generators to signal analyzers, all the equipment need pre and post measurement calibration to ensure the accurate results. Regular calibration often demonstrates that the company is taking its responsibility of delivery superior quality products seriously and making every effort to achieve customer satisfaction.

What are Standards Applicable for Calibration?

• ISO/IEC 17025: 2005 General Requirements for the Competence of Testing and Calibration Laboratories
• ISO/IEC Guide 98-3:2008 Guide for Expression of Uncertainty of Measurements
• ILAC-G8:03/2009 Guidelines on Assessment and Reporting of Compliance with Specification
• ILAC-P14:01/2013 Policy for Uncertainty in Calibration
• ANSI/NCSL Z540-1-1994 Rescinded 2007, but still in regular use for existing Aero/defense work
• ANSI/NCSL Z540.3-2006 Requirements for the calibration of Measuring and Test Equipment
• ISO 9001:2015 Quality management systems – requirements

When Equipment Calibration is Done?

• Equipment calibration is usually done whenever you want to;
• Verify the accuracy of new instruments and equipment
• Verify the equipment accuracy after its maintenance or repair
• Conduct periodic check of the equipment measurement accuracy
• Verify equipment measurements against the specifications especially when the other equipment is dependent on the core equipment
• Ensure equipment accuracy for smooth application
• Ensure equipment’s smooth functioning after it is due for calibration or maintenance.
• Stabilize the equipment functionality against the effects of shock or any other adverse conditions
• Lower the impact of the environmental changes on equipment measuring capacity, such as severe weather changes.

Related Article: 7 Key Benefits of Using Calibration Management Software

Benefits of Equipment Calibration for the product time-to-market or production yield

It Maintains Process Safety

In the manufacturing industry, it is important to measure component precisely to ensure product quality since it could lead to a safety risk. For example, if an equipment will not measure the right quantity of chemicals, it could lead to excess heat generation and equipment failure. It could pose life-risk to the site-workers. It will also impact all the other processes in the pipeline and will delay the time-to-market.

On the other hand, if the equipment gets calibrated regularly, you will be aware of inaccurate measurements before any major issue surfaces. Accordingly, you can escalate the issue for further investigation and effective resolution. Timely equipment calibration activities could save you from unnecessary delays in the routine processes, time to market, and correction.

However, it is bit tricky to manage calibration activity of multiple assets and equipment especially for geographically dispersed units. You can count on the cloud-based calibration management software for efficiently managing equipment calibration activities anywhere across the globe.

It Reduce Manufacturing Costs and Quality Failures

Product defects, deviations, nonconformances, or noncompliance – whatever you call it, a single issue can deteriorate the product quality. It can turn into losses for the organization in terms of money, time, and resources you may need for managing rework and product recalls. And, imagine all this just because of minor measurement differences.

Frustrating enough, right?

Calibration can save you from all these without any hassles. It will ensure that all your equipment is working fine and measuring accurately against the standard values, reducing the chances of errors and product defects. It further helps reducing manufacturing costs and quality failures. Therefore, Regular calibration activity gives you more control and confidence about your equipment and the products manufactured, reducing the rework and failure costs.

Make sure you don’t take a traditional approach to manage, schedule, and track the equipment calibrations wherein you have higher chances to miss equipment calibration. Go for a powerful calibration management software that can help you manage calibration activities for a bigger lot/batch of equipment efficiently.

It Ensures Consistent Product Quality

Any equipment must be monitored and maintained regularly to perform at its best capacity, efficiency, and quality. Even the most minor differences can result into major quality issues in the product, which further leads to customer disappointment and damage to the brand reputation. You can further face reduced sales, wastage of time and resources, and other problems.

Calibration ensures every product manufactured comply with the company’s internal specifications and applicable regulatory standards. Monitoring and maintaining equipment accuracy regularly will keep your production optimum and product quality consistent without any disruptions.

To maintain and monitor equipment without fail requires you to be proactive with your efforts. The best way to make a proactive approach is to invest in a compliance-friendly and powerful calibration management software. It will allow you to schedule equipment monitoring and will automatically send alerts before the calibration is due. Isn’t that every manufacturing company needs to ensure consistent product quality?

Related Article : How to Manage Equipment Calibration? (Here’s A Simple Solution)

It Helps Meet Compliance and Achieve Certification

When it comes to meeting compliance, your equipment must measure accurately against the specified values. This demonstrate you as a reliable organization that values quality the most. More accurate will be the measurements of the equipment; easier for you to meet and maintain compliance with applicable regulatory standards.

Calibration ensures that your equipment and devices are maintained on a regular basis. You can be confident of your processes and equipment working well every time you face a regulatory inspection or an audit for equipment, processes, people, and quality systems. To put simple, calibration helps meet compliance and achieve certification.

Whether it is about quality assurance, asset tracking, or turnaround time, all the calibration activities must be carried efficiently to avoid major failures. The best solution here is a calibration management software that can help perform all the calibration related activities from accuracy check to maintaining records, and escalating issues to NCR system. Right calibration software can help your organization stay compliant and achieve regular certification from regulatory authorities within minimal efforts.

It Ensures Customer and Employee Safety

When your instruments and measurement devices work fine, you can be confident of producing quality goods to the customer, ensuring complete safety. Additionally, you can ensure the employee safety too. All equipment meeting standards specifications will reduce the chances of failure or workplace incidents, keeping your employees completely safe.

You can implement a calibration management software to manage calibration records of all the equipment, regardless of their geographical location. Safety and quality are a wide-spread notion and it must be there at all costs.

It Maintains Brand Reputation

Now that we have talked about all the other aspects of performing calibration, it will not be wrong to say that equipment calibration ensures consistent quality, which eventually helps maintain the brand reputation at a global level.

You must remember that calibration is an activity to be performed on regular basis. Missing on calibration implies impact on the process quality, product quality, customer satisfaction, and eventually brand reputation.

However, using a robust calibration management software can help maintaining everything under a single system including calibration schedule management, document management, regulatory reporting, asset/criteria creation, and much more without any hassles.

Hope you understood the close connection between calibration and quality management. You can make most of this connection if only you take the right approach and right tools.

The most appropriate tool here would be a comprehensive enterprise quality management software that can help establish a closed-loop system to manage all the quality processes in a streamlined and standardized manner. One such solution is Qualityze EQMS Suite – set of 17 powerful modules.

Qualityze Calibration Management Software empowers organizations to streamline their calibration programs and maintain regulatory compliance. The software seamlessly integrates with our Document, Training, and Maintenance Management solutions, enabling organizations to manage single- and multi-site calibrations with efficiency. By doing so, businesses can enhance productivity, minimize downtime, and ensure equipment accuracy and reliability.

With Qualityze Calibration Management, you can;

• Create Asset and Criteria Library
• Manage Calibration Schedules
• Perform Scheduled/Unscheduled Calibration
• Get Improved Visibility of Equipment Performance
• Leverage More Traceability of Calibration Records
• Integrate Calibration System with Nonconformance Management System
• Integrate with Existing Business Systems
• Controlled Calibration Records and Data

Doesn’t Qualityze sounds like a comprehensive solution to manage all your calibration activities?

To know more about the Qualityze calibration management software, you can get in touch with the Qualityze Customer Success Team on 1-877-207-8616 or write to us at info@qualityze.com, and we will be right there for you.