Storage of Calibrated Tools

[OrangeHorns]

How do other manufacturing companies store their Calibrated tools on the Plant Floor? I'm having trouble trying to get machinist to keep the Calibrated tools clean and undamaged. Any help would be welcomed.

 

[Eredhel]

Do you mean shop owned tools or personal tools?

 

[OrangeHorns]

As of now we have both, I calibrate employee tools as well as company tools. Employees store their calibrated tools wherever they want and company calibrated tools are stored on work benches, tables, hanging on nails and other places. Is this common for calibrated tools in the manufacturing environment?

 

[hogheavenfarm]

We have a similar situation, and calibrated shop tools can get abused and damaged. That said, critical inspections (FPI) or final inspection is done in the Quality room with the master tools, or if the part is difficult or too big to move I go to it with my tools. Shop tools are generally calibrated off our quality master tools, so they are not normally used for any kind of critical acceptance, except between processes. Even then, an FPI is done at each process using the top level tools.

 

[Sidney Vianna]

The level of confidence on accurate reading from "calibrated tools" decreases with potential mishandling & abuse of the tool.

If such tools are being used in a way to confirm product integrity, you run the risk of letting bad product through. The operators should be reminded that maintaining the tools in proper condition is critical to ensure their ability to provide proper measurements...

A possible mitigating strategy is to perform "audits" of employee-owned calibrated tools in a very frequent basis, if the operators don't have the discipline to self report suspect tools.

 

[Eredhel]

We are more particular with shop tools and final acceptance tools of course. Personal tools definitely vary depending on the person. But so far personal tools that aren't treated as well as they should be still haven't been so bad that they have bad readings. It's a hard thing to babysit for sure. Have you come across any personal ones that are reading badly due to misuse?

 

[dwperron]

This discussion scares me.

So what happens in your companies when one of these calibrated tools comes back out of tolerance. If nobody controls who uses it, where it lives, and what it gets used for then how in the world can you ever know what measurements might have been impacted by it?

Try explaining that to a customer.

 

[Eredhel]

We absolutely control them. And every inspection records which device, by ID #, is used for each dimension. I'm not sure why you thought otherwise. I'm just talking about how you manage people's care of their personal tools. We still require every personal tool in the shop to be in our calibration records and procedures. So far we've never found one be a problem, but that doesn't mean they are kept ideally by them either.

 

[hogheavenfarm]

Yes, shop tools, even if calibrated, are not used for final acceptance. All tools are registered to departments, and traceability is maintained over any that might be out of tolerance, all final measurements have the instrument ID recorded also. I do not see any issue with escapes, and while we have a positive recall procedure, we have never had to use it.

 

[OrangeHorns]

I'm getting from the majority of all of you that they should be stored in a box or container, also they should always be in the calibration lab possession, am I correct? These tools are used to measure dimension to verify products are being drilled, turned, ground and so forth. That being said how do you manage Lean where they want all tools out on shadow boards to include calibrated tools?