Calibration Management Software: MudCats Metrology Suite

[Bob Collins - 2006]

I have been evaluating Calibration management software for several months and am wondering if anyone out there is using the Mudcats Metrology Suite. I'm curious as to what your opinion is regarding ease of use, time/cost savings Vs. old method, etc.

Thanks

 

[D.Scott]

Welcome to the Cove Bob.

Sorry but I don't know the software you are referring to so I can't help there but there is a very basic Access program that I uploaded a while back for Cove members that you are welcome to use. I think it is still available - maybe one of the moderators can help with leading you in the right direction.

Dave

 

[Rob Nix]

Ask Hershal Brewer at:

***DEAD LINK REMOVED***

He had a recent post here at Elsmar and referenced MudCats, so he might be able to help you. He is a regular at the ASQ Discussion Forum site and THE person to ask on questions of metrology.

I hope he doesn't mind the plug.

 

[Hershal]

Rob,

Thanks for the plug. Of course now Ihave to go deflate my ego a bit!

Mudcats is a relative newcomer to the calibration management software arena. I have not heard anything bad about it so far. Edison ESI developed it. ESI has a NVLAP accredited calibration lab. Talk to Shannon over at Edison ESI. If she does not have the answers to yur questions, she can get them.

The other dominant players are CyberMetrics, makers of GAGETrack, and Blue Mountain Resources, makers of Blue Mountain. Both are good packages also, and between the two, they have the lion's share of the COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) market.

GAGETrack runs MS Access in the background. I believe Mudcats and Blue Mountain run SQL in the background. Blue Mountain is also optomized for PDA use, making it highly portable.

I recommend getting a demo version of each, put the demos on a stand-slone computer, and have the folks who will use the package day-to-day actually run a side-by-side comparison. Select the package that best meets what you need.

Ask each of the developing organizations if their package includes an uncertainty calculator. If not, I know a good one available at no cost.

Hope this helps.

Hershal

 

[JStain - 2008]

Calibration management software

I've implimented and used all those mentioned here, as well as Flukes Met/Track. I have not used Mudcat though.

Depending on your use you may want to consider how robust the system needs to be. I found Met/Track to be good, but a bit expensive for a comapny with only a 1,000 assets to track.

I found Blue Mountains CALMAN to be adequate, but it's a closed database, so no SQL querys and the report generator Crystal reports to be fickle to work with. I must say bang for your buck CALMAN is pretty good, but somewhat limited.

LABMATE is top-of-the -line and leaves nothing to want for, but with a pricetag of $10,000 per license it's prohibitive to a small single company.

A good source of information on this topic is Quality Progress magazines annual review. JMHO

 

[Grizz1345]

Hi Bob,

I have been using GageTrak for the last 5 years. I have 2300 gages in my database and love the software. I have found there Tech Support very helpful and the software very user friendly. Hope this helps.

PS I must admit to doing beta testing for these people.

 

[dfirka]

Regarding LABMATE, the company that originally developed the soft (NorFox) was acquired by IndiSoft last year, developers of Gage InSite.

Although Indisoft still supports LabMate 3.5, they dropped support for Visual LabMate, and is encouraging LabMate customers to "upgrade" to Gage InSite. I don't know if they are currently selling any new licences of LabMate.

Daniel

 

[Joe Cruse]

Dave, I'm interested in looking at your Access file, but couldnot find it in the listing of attachments. Do you remember the file name, by any chance?

Thank you,

Joe

 

[Southern Girl]

ASQ Certifed Calibration Technician Cert #110

I have also used GageTrack, GMS (Gage Management System ) and Engage!. GageTrack was okay, no complaints and can you guess how I feel about GMS? The report writer is not user friendly at all and very limited in application. I am in the process of purchasing Engage! for my new job (currently using an Excel spreadsheet). I hope that the report manager is as good as it was 4 years ago and a license is priced at $1350. (When I used it before, I had over 3000 gages in the database including the MSA study informaton). Never used the Blue Mountain software, but I have heard that it was okay. Just another opinion to muddy the water!

 

[Graeme]

The lab I am working with looked at MudCats, compared it with several others including some add-ons that our main software supplier was developing. The lab management decided to stay with what we have - IndySoft's Gage InSite - and get their new add-ons for interval analysis and calibration automation.

(I must say, though, that MudCats has improved greatly over the last four years. If what they have today was available then, it would have made our initial software decision much more challenging.)

I see the old Norfox LabMate system mentioned a few times - also known in the Navy calibration world as the MEASURE system. That company no longer exists and support rights have been aquired by IndySoft. LabMate was one of the systems we evaluated four years ago but it had so many negatives it was not even a contender. We went with IndySoft's Gage InSite, although the Blue Mountain product was a close contender at that time.