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Preventive Maintenance in Calibration
Preventive Maintenance in Calibration
Preventive Maintenance in Calibration
The care and servicing by personnel for the purpose of maintaining equipment in
satisfactory operating condition by providing for systematic inspection, detection,
and correction of incipient failures either before they occur or before they develop
into major defects.
The work carried out on equipment in order to avoid its breakdown or malfunction. It
is a regular and routine action taken on equipment in order to prevent its
breakdown.
Maintenance, including tests, measurements, adjustments, parts replacement, and
cleaning, performed specifically to prevent faults from occurring.
.
Preventive Maintenance in Calibration
Why do we perform Preventive Maintenance (PM)?
The definitions that are provided above clearly state the reason why we perform a PM.
An additional reason is that it is a requirement under a recognized international
standard.
By performing preventive maintenance, we are fulfilling the below requirements under
ISO 17025:2017.
The requirements are under these clauses:
Clause 6.4 Equipment:
6.4.3 The Laboratory shall have a procedure for handling, transport, storage, use, and
planned maintenance of equipment in order to ensure the proper functioning and to
prevent contamination or deterioration.
6.4.10 when intermediate checks are necessary to maintain confidence in the
performance of the equipment, these checks shall be carried out according to a
procedure.
Clause 7.7 Ensuring the Validity of results:
7.7.1 The laboratory shall have a procedure for monitoring the validity of results. The
resulting data shall be recorded in such a way that the trends are detectable and, where
practicable, statistical techniques shall be applied to review the results. This monitoring
shall be planned and reviewed and shall include, where appropriate, but not limited to:
.
Preventive Maintenance (PM) Procedure
PM is a process because it involves a combination of activities or steps, not just directly
performing maintenance. We are following a Preventive Maintenance Program or a PM
procedure to execute properly.
The requirements are:
2. Define Schedule of PM
There is no standard set about PM execution. This is based on every need,
manufacturer’s recommendation, and design of every equipment or laboratory. The
important thing is we should set a defined frequency in performing a PM.
This defined frequency is scheduled by using a PM calendar. A simple excel sheet can
do the job.
In the lab that I worked for, we scheduled our PM every 3 months. Since our equipment
is reference standards used for calibration, it is a good choice to have them scheduled
more frequently to ensure that they are in confidence all the time.
PM checklist will simplify our work and will provide a continuous flow of maintenance
activity. It is a step by step list to be accomplished. see image
The checklist also serves as our preventive maintenance report.
The content on a checklist includes:
1. Cleaning
2. Assessing, checking, and recording the status of physical condition- some details to
be checked are the labels, stickers, and seals if it is still complete and readable.
3. Functionality check – involves the check for battery status, power-up conditions,
readable display, functional button, and many more.
4. Intermediate check or partial calibration – we will perform a simple calibration in
order to verify the accuracy of its reading.
5. Labeling – this is by accomplishing a Preventive Maintenance Log for proper
monitoring and serves as a history file.
Conclusion
Preventive Maintenance is one of the major activities inside a laboratory that is
integrated into our quality management system that guides our everyday operation. In
this post, I have presented the following:
Requirements for quality control under ISO 17025 as part of the quality system
procedure.
Preventive Maintenance (PM) Procedure which includes:
o PM schedule
o The PM Checklist and its contents
o Steps of PM execution
o PM reports and approval
I hope that you are now planning on creating a PM plan if you do not have one.
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Best regards,
edwin