John Cummins, CEO of Cal OpEx
On December 5th John Cummins, CEO of Cal OpEx, spoke on the key metrics companies should pay attention to to optimize their instrument calibration programs. The meeting took place at Ives Equipment in King of Prussia with about 25 members attending.
Cummins explained that he’s not talking about the actual mechanics of carrying out a particular calibration. He says companies should also focus on higher level metrics concerning the entire program. These are metrics that can help maintenance management:
- distribute manpower evenly throughout the year, minimizing on-demand and emergency work
- reduce overtime, and
- generate innovative ideas to improve the calibration process.
One important metric, for example, is determining the instruments that are critical to production and/or compliance with regulations. In the Life Sciences, the figure should generally fall within 30 to 40%. Plants with higher percentages should be suspect. A team representing quality, safety, engineering, and production should assess which instruments are really critical.
Cummins cited one case where an evaluation reduced the critical instrument percentage from 61.34% to just 39.89%. The result was reduction of 6,000 man hours a year.
Other metric topics discussed included calibration frequencies, workload leveling, on-demand and emergency work, and work practices.
A copy of the presentation may be downloaded from here.