Employee owned gages not entered in calibration system - AS9100 Clause 7.6

[hokieman]

Hello All!

I would like to run a scenario by everyone regarding 7.6 in AS9100.

The Management at my company is insisting that employees be allowed to maintain their own gages and that we "will not" enter them into the calibration system. He says that employee gages will be recognized as "reference only" gages. Any part will be bought off using gages that are in the calibration system. I do not feel this is appropriate according to what the standard specifically states. His argument is that the employee will use his gages just to monitor for problems. Am I wrong!

[Ted Schmitt]

At what stage of your manufacturing processes are these employee owned gauges utilized? If they execute any final inspection or liberate any intermediate product to the next process, then IMO they should be included in your calibration system.

We used to allow an employee to utilize his own caliper, but we included it in our calibration system and the cost of the calibration is paid for by the company. Now that we acquired sufficient calipers, employees utilize the companies calipers.

[Jennifer Kirley]

Ted is right. Any instruments that are used to assess conformance to requirements, regardless of who owns them, need to be in the calibration program. That means they'll need some identification method too. If they have serial numbers, terrific. If they don't, some identifier should be applied to the tools and they'll need to be tracked along with company owned tools.

[hokieman]

We have a first piece inspection process. Each first piece comes through inspection. When that part goes to the next operation, then the first piece of that operation comes through inspection again. Any monitoring of the part after the first piece is checked, is done with employee gages throughout the remainder of the that operation. I felt comfortable with this in the stages of implementing ISO but since the direction has turned to AS9100 (where personal gages are specifically mentioned), I am not as comfortable anymore.

[moiraknows]

I agree. Any instrument used during a process or even Preventative Maint. needs to be calibrated, identified and recorded.

[Jennifer Kirley]

Is there any dimension that does not get re-inspected, either by itself or as a part that goes into another part as a subassembly? I don't have AS9100 in front of me, but ISO 9001 clause 7.5.2 applies to such things.

In any case, calibrated equipment is meant to be used as more than first piece buy-off. If parts are being inspected, especially if there's a Certificate of Conformance involved, the tools should be calibrated.

The expense isn't that great. Gage blocks don't typically break the bank. Customer returns usually cost more.

[Claes Gefvenberg]

In Reply to Parent Post by hokieman

I would like to run a scenario by everyone regarding 7.6 in AS9100.

I am not really familiar with AS9100, but I think these old threads could come in handy (I searched for "employee owned")?

Employee Owned Inspection Equipment
Calibration in a Small Company with Employee Owned Measurement Equipment
Control of Vernier Calipers - Calipers easily switched between operators and lost
Monitoring and Measurement - Small shop making tooling for the foundry industry

I have mentioned in some of the above threads that we do not allow employee owned gauges.

/Claes

[Randy]

Been here, done this (in aviation).

If the employees are truly using their gages as nothing more than a "go-no go" reference and "all" final checks are done with instruments being maintained under your cal program, there shouldn't be a problem.

What would be good, is that some type of check of the employee tools against whatever an appropriate "standard" for the tool is (gage block, caliper, multimeter, whatever) be required.

"Go, no-go" gages are not new, I still have some in my tool box for Bell and Sikorsky helicopters, Beech & Grumman aircraft, Lycoming, GE and Pratt engines that could be used for a variety of things and may still be good.

We used them under established procedures and many times they were made according to a manufacturers specification for that specific purpose.