Our modern history is defined by the advent of writing. Writing is humankind’s principal technology for collecting, manipulating, storing, retrieving, communicating, and disseminating information. Before we learned to write, we lived in an era referred to as pre-history, or prehistoric times. As humans evolved, began cultivating land, and started living a less nomadic existence, the documentation of events became more sophisticated. Cave drawings gave way to hieroglyphics; stone tablets evolved into scrolls and then into bound books; the invention of typeset documents gave more and more people access to the written word. Today, we can send emails, text messages, and a variety of other digital communication around the world in a matter of seconds. Humans have evolved and documentation has evolved, and with it the way in which we manage calibration.

Recently, Patrick Zhao, Corporate Instrument & Analyzer SME for Braskem America, spoke at the Beamex Annual Calibration Exchange. He presented on Braskem’s, the largest petrochemical company in the Americas, integration of their computerized maintenance management systems and calibration management software. The presentation was so well received that we wanted to share some of the highlights with you and also provide a link to the full video recording, found below.

The shortest answer is to automate documentation to save time, lower risks, and quickly analyze data to make better decisions.

Most process plants have some sort of system in place for managing instrument calibration operations and data. However, just like airport security, the systems and processes can be very different even within the same company across different plants. Methods often differ greatly in terms of cost, quality, efficiency, and accuracy of data and the level of automation.

If you are manually writing results on paper or even manually entering data electronically, you’re spending about half your time on paperwork.  Using a documenting calibrator to automatically transfer test data to calibration software designed for the task can decrease the amount of time spent on calibration in many cases by up to 75%.

An investment into calibration equipment and systems must be financially justified, just like any other business investment. But does a cheaper cost of purchase always mean a higher return on investment? Not necessarily. When building a business case for calibration calibration system investment, what may seem at the outset to be cheaper may not necessarily be so, if the evaluation is made from total or life cycle cost perspective instead of evaluating cost of purchase only.