I am in the process of collecting information on control of delinquent gages within a manufacturing organization.

I supervise a calibration lab that is internal to a large manufacturing company. During a quality control discussion the question was posed..."What is the average percentage of delinquent gages per month for companies of our type". The goal is to identify a MEAN delinquent count and provide control limits for that MEAN.

We make metal and composite products for aerospace type applications.

Is there anyone who can give me an approximate percentage for their company and possibly an approximate quantity of the gage population?

Any input is appreciated.

Thanks.

Hello, and welcome to the Cove!

I have been in similar situations as yours. The answer is 0% delinquent.

Regardless of whether you have 20 or 2000 instruments in your system, they need to be in compliant with the requirements you have set forth.

Now, we have adjusted our calibration frequencies (a justified decision made before the due dates came up) to give more time, and have developed +/-2 weeks, +/-4 weeks, etc. to give some flexibility. But auditors don't care about the 1999 instruments in compliance, they care about the 1, four month past due analyzer being used for acceptance of finished product.

Suggestions:

1. Why do you have delinquencies? Have you created too tight of requirements on yourself that maybe are not needed?

2. Has management dedicated enough resources in your organization to deal with the calibration program? It is what it is. If you need five people, then get five people. If you need to ship everything out and pay expedite, then so be it. I know these are generalities, but they still hold. We as quality professionals get weary with nickel/dime cost rationale in quality matters. Calibration is no exception.

3. Do you have too many instruments? Do you need all the equipment? So many times when I am calibrating something I ask "Do you use this?" Amazing amount of "no's" come back. We lock it up and show it as inactive. For us, that is way easier than getting standard, review procedure, finding it, calibrating, document,etc.

4. What kind of culture exists at your organization which facilitates people using delinquent gauges? do they care? do they think it matters? Do they want them calibrated, but can't find anyone to help them? Maybe searching down this path will help.

Just a few ideas from me. Hopefully, others will have some better ones.

Having worked in numerous environments, I would say you are likely to see answers all over the map. In my most current environment (FDA compliant) the standard is 0% delinquencies, and the owners/users pretty well maintain that. This is a context with in the neighborhood of 6000 instruments.

The Fortune 100 company where I previously worked had (as I recall) around 5% delinquent (by number of instruments).

The driving factor in my experience is compliance. If you must comply with strict criteria (i.e.: FDA, Nuclear, FAA, etc.) anything greater than 0% delinquent can easily become an issue for a variety of reasons. If you work in a less demanding environment, it is a factor of the users understood need to get the instrument calibrated.

If you are recently addressing this, the goal should be zero percent delinquency. It is subjective to your company's requirements how quickly you drive for that zero percent, and what resources you expend to make it happen.

One parenthetical note: in my current context, if the user can not find the instrument by the due date (using due diligence), the owner documents it as lost and obtains management approval to declare the instrument as "lost", therefore causing it not to be delinquent.

I am a personal believer in the importance of zero percent delinquency (provided your intervals are accurately established and adjusted), because delinquency (by loose definition) means a statistical likelihood that the instrument is out of tolerance, and therefore an unwise increase in the risk that inaccurate measurement(s) may result in defect or quality reduction (philosophically speaking).

One important thing to concider in this that the user of the gauge should always LOOK AT THE CALIBRATION prior to use. This is the first line of defense ensuring that you are useing an approprate tool.

Since you are in aerospace using composits think of this as the same control used for shelf life items. You have a system to track shelf life but it is still the user of the material to make sure that they can process it prior to its out time or expiration. Even then you probaly have a check after cure that you meet the shelf life and outtime requiremetns for the various materials used in the part.

Placeing the process ownership on the calibration system to control gauges is not assuring that the user's care enough about the process they are performing to ensure that it is maintained. Why are you placing sticker on the gauges showing due date if the requirement is for the calibration system make sure it get the tool back? This type of controle would require no more than a tool ID and not the cal date, due date range of use.

The calibration system should provide notification of condition so that production can plan for continued opperation and track the gauges as found conditions to correctly set the due date based on the enviroment it is used in.

Please call help I have fallen off my soap box and can not get up:D

I agree with Jerry. I allow 0% deliquent. The solution for missing gages is to list them as active but missing. This lets the auditor know that you are aware the gage is past due but lost. Doing thi makes sure that my weekly and monthly calibration due list shows the missing gage, their storage location and past due date. I do not have a good explaination for the gage that shows up 3 years late. The story I got was it was found under a machine.