Would our daily metal detector checks be sufficient or am I required to have a 3rd party come calibrate them?
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?
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.)
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?
https://www.ifsqn.co...r-now-what-r128
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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.
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
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that was super informative! thank you
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?
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.
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.
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.