Jump to content

  • Quick Navigation
Photo

Would our daily metal detector checks be sufficient or am I required to have a 3rd party come calibrate them?

Share this

  • You cannot start a new topic
  • Please log in to reply
9 replies to this topic

Padfoot

    Grade - MIFSQN

  • IFSQN Member
  • 97 posts
  • 6 thanks
14
Good

  • United States
    United States
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Dallas, TX

Posted 14 April 2020 - 08:29 PM

Hello everyone!

I am in the process of getting my company ready for an SQF audit. I am having a little trouble figuring out if a 3rd party calibration on our metal detectors is required for SQF. We had one done a year ago and has just expired.

The code states:

11.2.11.4 Equipment shall be calibrated against national or international reference standards and methods or to accuracy appropriate to its use. In cases where standards are not available, the supplier shall provide evidence to support the calibration reference method applied.

11.2.11.5 Calibration shall be performed according to regulatory requirements and/or to the equipment manufacturers recommended schedule.

11.2.11.6 Calibration records shall be maintained.

would our daily metal detector checks be sufficient or am i required to have a 3rd party come calibrate them?

 

 



SQFconsultant

    SQFconsultant

  • IFSQN Fellow
  • 4,629 posts
  • 1135 thanks
1,125
Excellent

  • United States
    United States
  • Gender:Male
  • Interests:Just when I thought I was out - They pulled me back in!!!

Posted 14 April 2020 - 09:06 PM

Auditor will look at your checks, however it is "calibration" proof that will be needed.

 

Not sure what you mean by a 3rd party. Normally simply done by a service provider, thus the term 3rd party would be out so to speak.

 

By the way, be sure to have the company that does the calibration test on your service provider list (aka contract services.)


All the Best,

 

All Rights Reserved,

Without Prejudice,

Glenn Oster.

Glenn Oster Consulting, LLC -

SQF System Development | Internal Auditor Training | eConsultant

 

 

Martha's Vineyard Island, MA - Restored Republic

http://www.GCEMVI.XYZ

http://www.GlennOster.com

 

774.563.7048


Thanked by 1 Member:

Padfoot

    Grade - MIFSQN

  • IFSQN Member
  • 97 posts
  • 6 thanks
14
Good

  • United States
    United States
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Dallas, TX

Posted 14 April 2020 - 09:19 PM

Auditor will look at your checks, however it is "calibration" proof that will be needed.

 

Not sure what you mean by a 3rd party. Normally simply done by a service provider, thus the term 3rd party would be out so to speak.

 

By the way, be sure to have the company that does the calibration test on your service provider list (aka contract services.)

is there any requirements that the service provider must have?



Simon

    IFSQN...it's My Life

  • IFSQN Admin
  • 12,826 posts
  • 1363 thanks
880
Excellent

  • United Kingdom
    United Kingdom
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Manchester
  • Interests:Married to Michelle, Father of three boys (Oliver, Jacob and Louis). I enjoy cycling, walking and travelling, watching sport, especially football and Manchester United. Oh and I love food and beer and wine.

Posted 15 April 2020 - 05:52 AM

You may want to watch this recording of a webinar we made a while back with Robert Rogers of Mettler Toledo.

https://www.ifsqn.co...r-now-what-r128



Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk


Get FREE bitesize education with IFSQN webinar recordings.
 
Download this handy excel for desktop access to over 180 Food Safety Friday's webinar recordings.
https://www.ifsqn.com/fsf/Free%20Food%20Safety%20Videos.xlsx

 
Check out IFSQN’s extensive library of FREE food safety videos
https://www.ifsqn.com/food_safety_videos.html


Thanked by 1 Member:

Xoinks

    Grade - MIFSQN

  • IFSQN Member
  • 50 posts
  • 12 thanks
9
Neutral

  • United States
    United States

Posted 15 April 2020 - 01:37 PM

Hello everyone!

I am in the process of getting my company ready for an SQF audit. I am having a little trouble figuring out if a 3rd party calibration on our metal detectors is required for SQF. We had one done a year ago and has just expired.

The code states:

11.2.11.4 Equipment shall be calibrated against national or international reference standards and methods or to accuracy appropriate to its use. In cases where standards are not available, the supplier shall provide evidence to support the calibration reference method applied.

11.2.11.5 Calibration shall be performed according to regulatory requirements and/or to the equipment manufacturers recommended schedule.

11.2.11.6 Calibration records shall be maintained.

would our daily metal detector checks be sufficient or am i required to have a 3rd party come calibrate them?

 

What we did - 

 

We purchased NIST traceable wands (from Safeline), which we use for every check.  We used that to justify our 11.2.11.4.   We check it every hour and/or every SKU, whichever is more frequent.  I don't have a strong justification for that time frame, admittedly - but it hasn't been an issue.

 

I think you could make a case that would be sufficient, however - it's a bit weak by itself as the purpose of a calibration is to assure that your detector will not fail, and most detectors are large enough that you should make sure all areas will sufficiently detect the size metal you are concerned with.  

 

Therefore, in addition - as we don't have a servicer for our metal detectors, what we do is once/year we do a 125 wand test for each detector at its settings.  25 front, middle, back, right side, left side.  This challenges all sides of the product and the detector to prove that with our settings, an NIST-traceable wand rejects every single time.   We do this as we have multiple brands of detectors and when we had a servicer come in - they pretty much charged us $750 bucks to come in, run wands through once, and gave us a certificate that the detectors work.  If we had reps from each of the brands come in instead it would have been significantly more than that, and it didn't feel like it was money well spent as our detectors have been extremely reliable.   (Helped along by the fact we run a dry product).    

 

I don't suspect that this is a common way to handle it, but so far we've had auditors (including SQF) accept this.  Bonus - the certs on the wands are 5 years for NIST traceable.  



Thanked by 1 Member:

Padfoot

    Grade - MIFSQN

  • IFSQN Member
  • 97 posts
  • 6 thanks
14
Good

  • United States
    United States
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Dallas, TX

Posted 16 April 2020 - 07:21 PM

You may want to watch this recording of a webinar we made a while back with Robert Rogers of Mettler Toledo.

https://www.ifsqn.co...r-now-what-r128



Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

that was super informative! thank you 



Padfoot

    Grade - MIFSQN

  • IFSQN Member
  • 97 posts
  • 6 thanks
14
Good

  • United States
    United States
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Dallas, TX

Posted 16 April 2020 - 07:22 PM

What we did - 

 

We purchased NIST traceable wands (from Safeline), which we use for every check.  We used that to justify our 11.2.11.4.   We check it every hour and/or every SKU, whichever is more frequent.  I don't have a strong justification for that time frame, admittedly - but it hasn't been an issue.

 

I think you could make a case that would be sufficient, however - it's a bit weak by itself as the purpose of a calibration is to assure that your detector will not fail, and most detectors are large enough that you should make sure all areas will sufficiently detect the size metal you are concerned with.  

 

Therefore, in addition - as we don't have a servicer for our metal detectors, what we do is once/year we do a 125 wand test for each detector at its settings.  25 front, middle, back, right side, left side.  This challenges all sides of the product and the detector to prove that with our settings, an NIST-traceable wand rejects every single time.   We do this as we have multiple brands of detectors and when we had a servicer come in - they pretty much charged us $750 bucks to come in, run wands through once, and gave us a certificate that the detectors work.  If we had reps from each of the brands come in instead it would have been significantly more than that, and it didn't feel like it was money well spent as our detectors have been extremely reliable.   (Helped along by the fact we run a dry product).    

 

I don't suspect that this is a common way to handle it, but so far we've had auditors (including SQF) accept this.  Bonus - the certs on the wands are 5 years for NIST traceable.  

How do you document it?



Xoinks

    Grade - MIFSQN

  • IFSQN Member
  • 50 posts
  • 12 thanks
9
Neutral

  • United States
    United States

Posted 16 April 2020 - 07:30 PM

How do you document it?

We have the NIST certs on file for the wands.  For the wand test, we set up sheets for each wand size and each section we are testing (middle, side, leading edge, etc.).  Each pass is recorded to show we did all of the passes.  We also have a written work instruction documenting how we perform the check.  

 

It's all on our Calibration matrix.



Charles.C

    Grade - FIFSQN

  • IFSQN Moderator
  • 20,542 posts
  • 5662 thanks
1,544
Excellent

  • Earth
    Earth
  • Gender:Male
  • Interests:SF
    TV
    Movies

Posted 17 April 2020 - 12:09 PM

11.7.6.2  Metal detectors or other physical contaminant detection technologies shall be routinely monitored,
validated and verified for operational effectiveness.
  The equipment shall be designed to isolate defective
product and indicate when it is rejected.
11.7.6.3   Records shall be maintained of the inspection of foreign object detection devices and of any products
rejected or removed by them.  Records shall include any corrective actions resulting from the inspections.

 

 

I see no mention of calibration.

 

"Calibration" is a much debated terminology for metal detectors, eg -

 

https://www.ifsqn.co...rs/#entry105910

 

Validation involves possible interpretations of "Calibration".

 

The requirements are discussed at depth in the Guidance material.


Kind Regards,

 

Charles.C


Food Police

    Grade - MIFSQN

  • IFSQN Member
  • 50 posts
  • 9 thanks
11
Good

  • United States
    United States
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:California
  • Interests:Computers, Technology, Biology, Stock Market, Hunting, Fishing, Motorcycles, and of course Quality Assurance (food/beverage/nutraceutical/medical device/pharma)

Posted 20 April 2020 - 04:21 PM

What we did - 

 

We purchased NIST traceable wands (from Safeline), which we use for every check.  We used that to justify our 11.2.11.4.   We check it every hour and/or every SKU, whichever is more frequent.  I don't have a strong justification for that time frame, admittedly - but it hasn't been an issue.

 

I think you could make a case that would be sufficient, however - it's a bit weak by itself as the purpose of a calibration is to assure that your detector will not fail, and most detectors are large enough that you should make sure all areas will sufficiently detect the size metal you are concerned with.  

 

Therefore, in addition - as we don't have a servicer for our metal detectors, what we do is once/year we do a 125 wand test for each detector at its settings.  25 front, middle, back, right side, left side.  This challenges all sides of the product and the detector to prove that with our settings, an NIST-traceable wand rejects every single time.   We do this as we have multiple brands of detectors and when we had a servicer come in - they pretty much charged us $750 bucks to come in, run wands through once, and gave us a certificate that the detectors work.  If we had reps from each of the brands come in instead it would have been significantly more than that, and it didn't feel like it was money well spent as our detectors have been extremely reliable.   (Helped along by the fact we run a dry product).    

 

I don't suspect that this is a common way to handle it, but so far we've had auditors (including SQF) accept this.  Bonus - the certs on the wands are 5 years for NIST traceable.  

 

We also do monitoring hourly with NIST traceable standards (wands/cards/balls), and we also have a validation study that is similar to the 125 wand test you described. Although we can do it ourselves, we opt to have a 3rd party complete it for us since they are already calibrating all of our other scales, calibration weights, probes, gauges, etc. I don't think they charge us that much for doing the test though, as we probably would have opted to do it ourselves if that was what they were charging us to do it.





Share this


0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users