You have everything in place. All quality steps have been implemented, but your gauges are old and un calibrated.

Is your effort worth anything?

No!

Every time the operator finishes an operation, uses the same gauges "The uncalibrated ones" to justify his accuracy in production. In my life as a quality engineer, I have come across corporates, who have calibration of gauges in terms of hours.

There were certain gauges which were calibrated in 1989 (Now 2008), and it had 200 hours of calibration still left on it. I asked the supervisor, when the gauge will next go for calibration? his answer was "my be in another 15 years".

 

I asked him to check the accuracy of the gauges, to which he responded in defensive stating that he already knows that the gauges have 43% repeatability!!!

After verifying the scrap information, I initiated a black belt project on the Measuring systems used on the floor. The project was very interesting as everyone knew the truth but none was willing to work on that aspect unless pushed to do it. Every month the scrap was close to $150K on just one product line.

I investigated the gauge lab for the gauge information in gauge track it. The total gauges listed were in tune of 28,000 plus, gauges lost or misplaced/ unaccounted for approx 7,280 gauges