Scale Calibrations
Good Morning,
We are a food manufacturing plant, we have our scales calibrated annually by the state and we have a QA Tech that does them monthly.
The production teams uses them continuously throughout the day, the subject came up that we should have weights on the lines and they should do them each morning.
Can anyone give me there thoughts on this please and thank you
Stacy Surine
Every Friday I walk around with a weight and check every scale in the building and sign off that they're within a stated tolerance. The guys in production do have a weight that they use whenever they see fit, but it's not recorded anywhere.
I guess it depends on how much risk you think there is that a scale will be off. in 15 years, I've had a scale damaged once, and it didn't a test weight to tell me it was off, so to me the risk is quite low, but it depends on your place and what you make, etc. There's usually not a one size fits all answer to anything in the food safety realm.
But if you want to add a line to your preop and say they tested the scales, and they sign off on it each day, it certainly won't hurt anything, and is one more layer of coverage. Which is good. Most everything in my place has a redundancy as well.
When QA checks scales monthly, are they ever off? I do mine monthly and rarely are they out of calibration, and even then not to the point of product being out of specification. So, in my case, I leave it at monthly.
Leaving tested, certified weights out at workstations could open the possibility of them being damaged, which I definitely would not want to happen.
Good Morning,
We are a food manufacturing plant, we have our scales calibrated annually by the state and we have a QA Tech that does them monthly.
The production teams uses them continuously throughout the day, the subject came up that we should have weights on the lines and they should do them each morning.
Can anyone give me there thoughts on this please and thank you
Stacy Surine
We use a variety of scales, with most on an annual calibration and irregular verification, with it being rare for them to need adjustment the risk is low. However, the big scales that are most roughly treated get a daily verification by the maintenance team when equipment in the room is reassembled after cleaning.
Verification frequency is relative to how likely they are to be out of range, and the risks that causes.
I always shoot for annual calibration of our scales and our test weights, and then daily/shift change verification that scales are accurate. It can be a line on a pre-op form for the operator to show what weight they used on what scale number to verify it is within spec. I hate the idea of letting the plant run multiple days with an inaccurate scale, the traceability would be difficult to prove if it came down to it. Then scales can be placed on hold and repaired/recalibrated by the contractor as needed when found to be out of spec.
I will suggest have in mind what is the purpose of your scales. For example: If you use the scale to measure a raw material that has a claim on your label, that scale needs to be 100% accurate so a daily/shift verification would be recommended. On the other hand, If you use an scale to verify the final product is within weight ranges and very unlikely to variation, then that scale can be check on a weekly/monthly basis.
At my former position, we were doing scales weekly. Then had an audit and had to start doing them daily. We had a LOT of audits from several different agencies and always fixed any issues they found ASAP. It seemed it got to the point where they were looking for things to ding us on.
You're testing your scales daily, but you're not writing down the time of day it's happening.
You're checking ______ 4 times a day, now do it hourly.
You're checking _______ monthly, now do it weekly.
I did manage to keep thermometer calibration to weekly during off-season times, but daily when we were using them more often.