Do you use Excel to schedule and manage your calibrations?
Many companies begin managing their calibration activities with an Excel spreadsheet. But if your organization has outgrown Excel then you could be at risk of missing critical calibrations.
Excel is a fine application for its intended purpose as a personal productivity tool, but as for managing calibration schedules and compliance, it soon exceeds its capabilities. Consider these limitations and risks:
Vulnerable to Entry Errors:
Data entry errors are possible. While creating pull down selections and validation of entries within Excel can be done, this will require significant expertise and maintenance.
Missed Calibrations:
When the accuracy of an instrument is critical to product quality or safety it is essential that calibrations are completed on time and results are within specific tolerances. Missed calibration tests can be costly, as they can result in lost batches, fines, or other sanctions.
Compliance risk:
Excel will neither provide the ability to link a user to the actions taken nor produce compliant certificates. Without an audit trail, there is no way to determine if, when and by whom a change was made to a record.
Collaboration:
Excel is not designed to support concurrent users. Sharing amongst users and locations usually requires a shared drive or emailing attachments. This is neither secure nor timely.
Scales poorly:
As the use of an Excel based tool expands, not only will the collaboration become more difficult but performance will as well. Excel is not designed to support large numbers of records and queries, consequently updates and reporting all slow down.
Difficult to troubleshoot:
Certainly, spreadsheets can be protected but not easily to the field level or to the role of one type of user. Furthermore, as the spreadsheet evolves over time, there is the risk of lack of or incomplete documentation which affects productivity.
Business Continuity:
Often the Excel based tool was built and is administered by an individual. Lacking both documentation and possibly design specifications, should the author/administrator leave, who will maintain and update the tool?
The solution
But there is good news – dedicated calibration management software exists that eliminates these issues. They are designed to be truly multi-user and remove the burden and risk of maintaining and accessing these records across your organization. CompuCal Calibration Management is one of the best calibration management applications. It has been designed by engineers for engineers taking into account the needs of the users. In addition to this, CompuCal is designed to be compliant with 21 CFR Part 11 and to help users to ensure regulatory compliance. Request a free demo today to get to know more about our CompuCal application.
Read more about the reasons why you need calibration management software.