In your manufacturing facility you probably have some kind of test equipment. There might be multimeters for checking electrical values, torque wrenches that are used on an assembly line to ensure bolts on assemblies are installed correctly, scales for measuring bins of parts by the number of parts in the bin, and a host of other physical items. If you have a testing facility in an electronics plant and need to conform to FCC Part 15 of the CFR, you might have a microwave testing chamber with microwave generators, amplifiers and antennas for this testing. These are just a few of countless examples of test equipment you might have.

If you're new to this kind of equipment here's something to know: A torque wrench bends. Electrical parts degrade over time. And the high-powered ceramic vacuum tubes in microwave amplifiers go on the fritz a little at a time. If you have any of this kind of equipment and you're using it in critical areas, and particularly if you're going for ISO 9000 certification of your facility, you're going to need a calibration program.

Setting up such a program can go one of two ways. You can either set up your own program, which is hugely expensive, or you can contract with the services of a local calibration facility. The latter is considerably less expensive with the same result. Most people working as calibration technicians in local calibration facilities are former military. These folks are likely the graduates of military specialty schools leading to operating specialties of NEC 6673, NEC 1589 and/or MOS 6492. This author happens to have had graduated from all three of these schools.

The equipment used in a local calibration facility is known as being at a certain level. Their equipment is calibrated at a higher level facility and has better accuracy then yours. This goes right up to the highest level calibration equipment, say the physical equipment at NIST in Gaithersburg, MD, the U.S. master atomic clocks at the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC (which are synchronized to the master clock in Greenwich, England), or a host of other government-owned locations.

With each calibration level comes the paperwork, the certifications of equipment, the history of repairs and adjustments, etc. This is a complicated endeavor. Certification programs such as ISO 9000 require the tracking of calibration equipment at your level, traceable all the way back to the highest level equipment.

Any Preventative Maintenance software you have should be able to track calibration processes, due dates, repairs and adjustments, and everything else associated with the test equipment you manage. Even if you're not currently looking into any kinds of certifications, calibration is still an important aspect of the management of test equipment which should not be ignored.