Requal or recert tools inhouse for ISO/AS shop? Where to stop the madness?

[huleo]

We had a customer's quality guy in recently that was asking all those prying questions like he works for the IRS. Basically we have certain tools and masters recertified by an accredited lab, and we use those tools to "qualify" other tools. For instance, we use certified gage blocks to requalify mics. I see this as obvious common sense and authorized, but this guy seemed to frown on this like we were being shady and cheap.

I am sure we don't follow every nonsense rule every put forth by bean counters, but this guy was also from a shop where they have not once rejected any of our parts!

So anyway, can someone enlighten on this? I am sure if we ask the outside lab about it, they will "recommend" certifying every tool in the shop every 30 days, including our screwdrivers.

 

[Booze Daily]

I don't think there is any documented "proper" way to do calibration.
If you're ISO it should be whatever procedure is written in there. End of story.

 

[huleo]

I don't think there is any documented "proper" way to do calibration.
If you're ISO it should be whatever procedure is written in there. End of story.

that's exactly as I understand it. I think this other quality guy is used to doing things a different way and assumes his way is right'er. It seemed like he wanted us to go buy a bunch of new equipment even though I could prove our accuracy.

 

[rklopp]

We are ISO and do what our particular ISO plan says, which is annual cals on individual measuring instruments. We send them out to a local vendor. We can do what you are calling qualification, but it has to be documented and justified in each use case, because it deviates from what our plan says is normal practice. We have liability risk if some measurement is found to be bad due to lack of or incorrect cal, so we try hard to be diligent. In my view, the annual cal fees are money well spent.

Your ISO plan might allow something different, so don't consider ours as gospel by any means.

 

[huleo]

Let me give an example. We send out gage blocks for cal. We then use those to do inhouse calibration of mics. In most cased, there is no 'calibration' as there is nothing to adjust at all, they are simply "checked" to be accurate, and we use several block sizes to do this.

All this is in our manual, BUT I think what this guy is hitting on is he wants an outside certified mic set. At some point it becomes appeasing the customer and nothing more.

 

[M.B. Naegle]

We do our measuring tools the same way. Standards get recertified by a lab and then we have written procedure for using those standards to in-house-certify other measuring tools. It's all for our own peace of mind though as we really don't have any customers that want any of this documentation. They just want the product to work, so we determine to best way to make that happen, which in my experience has less to do with how new/old things are or how many binders of paper there is on the shelf, and more to do with everyone who is part of the process knowing how and WHY things are the way they are.

If your customer wants something different, I'd be open with them and show them how you have done things this way and never had any issues BUT, if they would like you can purchase new tools that will be certified however often they like.... for X amount of money in addition to their prior costs. That might shut them up, OR, they spring for it and you keep a happy customer.

 

[DanielG]

Let me give an example. We send out gage blocks for cal. We then use those to do inhouse calibration of mics. In most cased, there is no 'calibration' as there is nothing to adjust at all, they are simply "checked" to be accurate, and we use several block sizes to do this.

All this is in our manual, BUT I think what this guy is hitting on is he wants an outside certified mic set. At some point it becomes appeasing the customer and nothing more.

If you're using several sizes of gage blocks to check a mic, you ARE calibrating it. The issues I've heard about from auditors were when the calibration wasn't traceable back to NIST. The auditor wants to be able to pic up Mic #1234 from the inspectors desk and ask about it. You need to be able to answer "Yes, here's the calibration cert showing that Joe calibrated it on December 3rd, using gage block set #4567 and procedure ABC. Here's the cert for the gage block set showing that it was calibrated by ACME Calibration on July 2nd." You now have tracability from that mic all the way back to NIST.

If all you're able to say is, "Yeah, we check our mics against the gage blocks" then they're going to write up an NC.

 

[huleo]

If you're using several sizes of gage blocks to check a mic, you ARE calibrating it. The issues I've heard about from auditors were when the calibration wasn't traceable back to NIST. The auditor wants to be able to pic up Mic #1234 from the inspectors desk and ask about it. You need to be able to answer "Yes, here's the calibration cert showing that Joe calibrated it on December 3rd, using gage block set #4567 and procedure ABC. Here's the cert for the gage block set showing that it was calibrated by ACME Calibration on July 2nd." You now have tracability from that mic all the way back to NIST.

If all you're able to say is, "Yeah, we check our mics against the gage blocks" then they're going to write up an NC.

You hit on the exact focus of our system, thus the reason for my confusion. We realize there has to be traceability, and there is. But this is not really a formal audit, but rather a customer's quality guy 'evaluating' our procedures.

To a degree, I think they are looking for us to be devoting more capital investment in a 'continuing excellence' approach, like the newer stuff is somehow better. I don't think anything will come of it and he more or less is instructed to find 'something' to preach about.

 

[LockNut]

You haven't seen madness until you have to do an IQ with a "calibrated" 3 gallon bucket.

 

[jccaclimber]

If you're using several sizes of gage blocks to check a mic, you ARE calibrating it. The issues I've heard about from auditors were when the calibration wasn't traceable back to NIST. The auditor wants to be able to pic up Mic #1234 from the inspectors desk and ask about it. You need to be able to answer "Yes, here's the calibration cert showing that Joe calibrated it on December 3rd, using gage block set #4567 and procedure ABC. Here's the cert for the gage block set showing that it was calibrated by ACME Calibration on July 2nd." You now have tracability from that mic all the way back to NIST.

If all you're able to say is, "Yeah, we check our mics against the gage blocks" then they're going to write up an NC.

This pretty much sums up what I was going to write. I wanted a few things when I would informally audit:

Current stickers on all gages.

The ability to trace gages back and prove NIST traceability. I’ll pick two up at random. One from a highly used area and one from a less used area.

A2LA cert. for any outside labs you might use, or a solid explanation. This was added when we found a supplier using what was basically a random guy in his garage as their external cal. lab. That alone would have been ok, but we found it by chasing down improperly calibrated tools which had resulted in a quality spill.

General competence in using the tools.

 

[jccaclimber]

One more, your measurements have to pass what I call the giggle/chuckle test. If your head of quality tells me you’re going to measure a +/- 10 micron tolerance with a pair of calipers I’m going to start chuckling and you’re not getting the volume production contract. That happened more than once.

 

[Conrad Hoffman]

I think you should do whatever the customer is willing to pay for. The minute it affects their wallet, they'll become more reasonable.

 

[Larry Dickman]

Sounds like you're mixing shit with feces. You say it's your customers quality guy. Well, your customer can impose any requirements they feel like, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with ISO/AS For instance, you can calibrate your mics against traceable gage blocks, but there needs to be a written procedure for it. Your AS auditor would have approved your procedure and during your surveillance audits he would check to make sure you are following procedure.
Your customer could come in and require your calibration be done by a grossly overweight man wearing a pink tutu. They can if they want and it has nothing to do with ISO/AS

 

[FamilyTradition]

As others have said, despite what is in your SOP's, your individual customers may impose different requirements - if you do not wish to conform to those requirements, they may not wish to do business with you, and will take it to a shop that will jump through their hoops.

If these additional procedures are easy enough to perform and don't eat too much into your margins, I would just consider it the price you have to pay to do business with them.

If the customer begins to become a PITA (wait, I thought the customer was always right?!? ), you could simply re-quote all the work you do for them to account for the extra steps taken to follow their quality procedures.

When their purchasing agent craps their pants and asks why the price went up, you can explain that it is due to these new QA procedures that he requested.

Worst case scenario, you lose a customer that was going to waste your time and causes stress.

Best case scenario, you find that your customer's quality guy won't bother you ever again.