7.1.5.3.1 Internal Lab Scope

[Johnnymo62]

I don't think you need to mention sending measurement tools out for calibration in your lab scope. You only need to provide the info for the measurements you do in your lab.

Your Auditor confused your issue by giving you a "calibration cert" from a calibration lab.

 

[Crimpshrine13]

We do not do any in-house calibration, only verification. We need one for inspection. What do you put in the comments box if you send them for outside calibration?

If you do not do in-house calibration, then ultimately the certificate from the external lab with ISO 17025 or national equivalent accreditation should satisfy this. But! You will need the lab scope from the external lab citing the calibration methodology. What do you exactly mean by "only verification"? Are you saying that you are only verifying the measuring device is being calibrated, but not using the measuring device for your testing (measuring) purpose? Even if you are not calibrating but only measuring your parts, I believe you still should have laboratory scope with the methodology in the comment area. In ASME standard, measuring device such as calipers and micrometers have non-mandatory good operating procedures, meaning that just by mentioning it in the laboratory scope will show that you are using these measuring devices according to these operating procedures.

 

[sfuller]

We have set masters to verify they are reading accurately. We do receive/keep on file external calibration documentation on file. The auditor stated, that even though we do not calibrate, or do any testing, we use our measuring devices to inspect customer parts so we need to list these with the standards used. I have updated our lab scope to reflect every measuring device family we use, with the range of properties, uncertainty, and in the comments section how they are verified. The auditor stated that we do not have requirements for uncertainty or reference to iso 17030. So now this leads me to the question, do I list uncertainty or the scope? I took all this information from external calibration certs.

 

[Crimpshrine13]

We have set masters to verify they are reading accurately. We do receive/keep on file external calibration documentation on file. The auditor stated, that even though we do not calibrate, or do any testing, we use our measuring devices to inspect customer parts so we need to list these with the standards used. I have updated our lab scope to reflect every measuring device family we use, with the range of properties, uncertainty, and in the comments section how they are verified. The auditor stated that we do not have requirements for uncertainty or reference to iso 17030. So now this leads me to the question, do I list uncertainty or the scope? I took all this information from external calibration certs.

We list measurement uncertainty on our lab scope. We do not have ISO 17025 accreditation, but we lay out our lab scope very similar way to ISO 17025 accredited labs. Measurement uncertainty can usually be found on the leaflet that comes with the measurement devices, or the manufacturer's website. Most of our numerical measurement devices are manufactured by Mitutoyo, so I take their numbers on their product leaflet. I believe it is a better practice to list the measurement uncertainty because when someone sees, say, your measurement results or control plan, they know what the anticipated uncertainty is and what kind of accuracy that the device has. One of the things that should be mentioned is that the measuring devices must be capable of reading the extra decimal points to the measuring characteristic's specification. So, if the specification says 10.00 ± 0.02mm, then the measuring device must be able to read 3 decimal points (0.000). So, if the lab scope shows that measurement uncertainty, anyone who sees it can tell whether the device being used is appropriate for measuring that characteristic. If the specification is 10.00 ± 0.02mm, and if you are using a device that can only read 2 decimal points, then you cannot tell if it's meeting the specification because the anything below 0.024mm would be rounded down and still shows as 0.02mm, but in reality it's considered out of specification.

So, getting back to your question of whether to list uncertainty on the lab scope or not...I think you must list them in my opinion.

 

[Ashland78]

We do not do any in-house calibration, only verification. We need one for inspection. What do you put in the comments box if you send them for outside calibration?

I would recommend to input the procedure number that you use for outsourcing and that should suffice.

 

[manohar2776]

We got dinged on the similar issue some years ago. Ours was that I didn't have the method of calibration standard on the lab scope. Adding the standard method of calibration and measurement in comment section cleared the issue.

Example:
Length Measurement / Digimatic Caliper / Range (0 - 150) mm / Best Uncertainty ± 0.02 mm (L ≤ 50) / Comments: ASME B89.1.14-2018
Calibration - Digimatic Caliper / Range (0 - 20) mm / Maximum Permissive Error ± 0.02 mm (L ≤ 50) / Comments: ASME B89.1.14-2018 Use gage blocks traceable to ISO 17025

Thanks a lot my Knowledge improved,