Management of Measuring Equipment for Quality Assurance in Manufacturing Processes: A Decision-Making Support System

This paper aims to present a decision-making support system for the efficient management of measuring equipment in Manufacturing plants, providing support for condition analysis and calibration interval definition, a missing functionality in current computerized systems. For the same equipment, existing methods for defining the calibration/verification interval give very different results. The proposed solution for management of measuring equipment includes a developed approach for the selection of the method that best suits the equipment, considering its characteristics and condition of use. Since unpredictable situations, such as falls, shocks or misuse can change the behavior of measuring equipment, an additional approach for unpredictable behavior identification is included, using EWMA and I-MR charts. The approaches were developed and tested with data of measuring equipment of a cork company. This solution brings cost savings to companies since, by helping to adjust calibration or verification intervals, allows avoiding the use of inapt equipment for quality control of manufactured products.