In-Plant Manufacturing - Calibration

- Gage Calibration in the Automotive Supply Industry -
Auditable QS9000 Compliance - Huge Productivity Gains

Texas Instruments’ (“TI”) Attleboro, MA, plant makes automotive sensors and controls. The car makers required that TI comply with QS 9000 if it wanted to remain a supplier to them. To meet the QS 9000 requirements, TI had provide for an auditable record of every calibration procedure performed 2000 of the approximately fifteen thousand gages that it regularly monitors. TI could not pass the cost of the QS 9000 system on to its customers, and would not accept adding staff or increasing operating costs. Therefore, TI pulled together a team to evaluate and improve TI’s calibration inspection management process.

TI uses MetTrak computerized calibration management system (CCMS) from Fluke to schedule gage inspection and maintenance. The benefits of CCMS systems end at the point that work orders are issued:

• those work orders are issued in paper, all data collected in connection with them are on paper, and the results of work must be input by hand into the CCMS system.
• TI’s paper work order and manual data entry system was cumbersome, labor intensive and subject to data entry errors.

Consequently, TI chose PenFact’s PenFact’s XMD paperless, electronic data collection software running on mobile pen computing tablets operating MS Windows to make its CCMS truly paperless.

Key factors affecting TI’s choice of the PenFact’s XMD software software were:

• ease of retrieving from Met/TRAK lists of gages due for calibration along with each calibration procedure;
• ease of replicating familiar paper forms on the computer screen;
• improved accuracy and legibility of recorded data;
• electronic signature capture of the recording technician;
• on-board data processing capability for immediate on-site feedback;
• elimination of paper records; and
• ease of electronically updating the CCMS master database and archiving synchronized data.

TI now has an auditable, paperless calibration data recording and storage system that meets QS 9000 requirements for the critical two thousand gages. The calibration staff readily and easily accepted the new system.

Not only did TI avoid increasing staff, but TI was able to reassign the calibration technician, who previously spent full time on paperwork, to more productive technical responsibilities. That alone increased efficiency approximately 30%.

Moreover, TI found that it could cover all 15,000 gages with the same 4 people. Thus, TI obtained not just what it needed for the 2,000 critical gages. It also obtained exponentially more coverage that it originally sought, all without additional staff or investment.

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PenFact, Inc. · 500 Harrison Avenue, Suite 3R · Boston, MA 02118
Phone: (617) 482-6900 · Fax: (617) 482-5155 · www.penfact.com