Satisfying Today's Customer

About this Article
Mike Hutchins wrote and presented it at the British Electromagnetic Measurements Conference in November 1995.

The Calibration Service Delivery Paradigm

Whoever said "Nothing changes" was wrong! We work in a dynamic environment -- measurement equipment-users continually press for improved support services in terms of product coverage, business-ease, response-time and price (or at least value-for-money!). Ten or even five years ago, target turnaround times (TAT) of fifteen days were established as acceptable to the majority of our return-to-bench customers. Today, TAT is no longer seen as an appropriate metric for charting performance against customers' expectations. Order fulfillment or on-time delivery-rate better measures our ability to focus resources appropriately to match their needs. Nevertheless, driven by demand, commitment times for job completion in the mid-nineties are typically set at five days. However, an increasing number of equipment-users will tolerate downtimes of just a few hours -- impossible to satisfy using the traditional service delivery mechanism.

Who and Why?

The typical seeker of calibration services in Britain is no longer in the defense business, as was the case ten or more years ago; today's customer is likely to be directly or indirectly associated with production of consumer-goods notably, for us, the "communications" sector. "Time is money" could be the maxim best associated with this market segment where production continuity is of the utmost importance. Yet a large pool of in-storage equipment to facilitate maintenance activity is an intolerable cost-burden. Further, the difficulties of locating, extracting from test-racks and shipping a lot of equipment to a remote calibration supplier and co-ordinating the exercise can be a logistics nightmare. What better than to have the calibration done on-site?

Traditional on-site calibration may not be viable

Options

One solution is to equip an engineer to undertake the work in a suitable area in the customer's facility. This type of service has been available for many years but is restricted in the number and product-range that, practically, can be supported. This limitation can be overcome through assignment of more engineers, employing a larger inventory of test gear, but the approach still requires the customer to designate an area of adequate environmental control for the work to be carried-out. Although modern factories often provide suitable conditions for calibration, the pressure is to utilize all available space in fulfillment of the manufacturer's core competency; accommodation for a temporary calibration team and their equipment is at a premium. Hence, the solution implemented by Hewlett-Packard (Agilent Technologies) ; the mobile electrical calibration laboratory.

Summarizing the evolution

The Facility in Summary

The laboratory is housed in a 13.8 metre (44ft) articulated trailer with on-board environmental control (temperature/humidity/line voltage). A separate cleaning/safety-test/warm-up area is located at the entrance. The customer is responsible for providing a 3-phase, 63Amp electrical supply outlet within 100 metres of the trailer's parking position. On-board monitors maintain a record of the environment and even when in-transit the laboratory is protected against low temperature extremes by an integral, thermostatically-controlled, oil-burning heater.

It can contain up to eight configurable workstations, usually of the automated variety, together with support equipment. The range of test gear is dictated by the type of equipment to be calibrated. Apart from items which are specifically dedicated to the trailer, the resources of our Service Center are also made available where feasible, resulting in a capability to calibrate almost the entire spectrum of instruments of multivendor origin that could be tested in the Center itself.

Regarding the support equipment, the ATE and record-keeping systems are all linked to a local area network computer system which enables utilization of the same (proprietary) software as used at our permanent facility. Signals from an atomic (rubidium vapor) frequency standard are also distributed.

Staffing is by engineers from our permanent laboratory who are selected according to their familiarity with the products to be calibrated and the equipment used. If NAMAS certification is required, an approved signatory forms one of the team members. In principle, the operation of the mobile lab. is the same as in-house so as to achieve uniformity of work-process (procedures and methodology) hence aiding staff undertaking the on-site activity and presenting a consistent product to the customer, in terms of quality and extent of service. However, in order to maximize engineering efficiency, the consolidation of test results and certificates is completed after the event at the main office for delivery to the customer in bulk.

In addition to the normal sampling inspection activity, accuracy confidence checks are made on selected items of test equipment prior to and following transit and a formal record kept of the results.

Conclusion

The first "Volume, On-Site Calibration" (VOSCAL) event completed using the mobile laboratory was in February this year at which 1100 instruments, ranging in complexity from £150 handheld multimeters to £60,000 communications analyzers, were calibrated over 4 weeks. The service is attractive to those with large, production-critical equipment inventories such as to employ the facility on-site for 1 to 6 weeks and has proved to be a very successful addition to the portfolio of service-delivery options offered to our customers. Although we have mobile/on-site operations in other countries, it is currently the largest such facility -- and notably, has UKAS/NAMAS category II accreditation which was assessed and granted during that first VOSCAL!