Laboratory equipment inventory
Managing equipment in a laboratory’s quality management system is an integral part of maintaining overall quality and test results. So let’s review how to add equipment into your inventory and set up a maintenance and a cal/check/standard schedule in the R18LabQMS application.
When adding equipment into your quality manual go to manage lab/view inventory. Here, you can add equipment, view and edit all details under the actions drop down menu including history. In this process you will set upcoming procedure dates that will appear on the dashboard.
Other places you can view equipment and procedure in your Quality Management System…
The dashboard tab is the default page when logging in (after completing the set-up process) that summarizes all past due and approaching deadline procedures, here you can view procedures due ranging from one day to three months (default is one month).
The procedure history tab is designed as a quick reference for all maintenance and cal/check/standard procedures. Think of this as a filing cabinet where you can easily access your procedures. This was created at the request of an AMRL assessor in the early days of R18LabQMS during our on-site assessment.
The quality manual tab sections 6.1 you can view a summary of all of your laboratory equipment including the last and next procedure dates. Section 6.1.2 is a listing of the most recent cal/check/stand procedures, and 6.1.4 is the listing for the most recent maintenance procedures.
In our last blog we summarized the latest upgrades, but just to recap 1.6.3 relating to equipment here’s a summary:
There are new information fields for equipment information. For equipment in your inventory a ‘company reference ID’ and ‘equipment nickname’ can be assigned to a piece of equipment. When using the company reference ID or equipment nickname information fields, they will appear on the dashboard with those given fields instead of serial number and equipment name. Using the equipment nickname field can be effective in distinguishing between multiple pieces of equipment in the laboratory.
2015 – Q1
We have completed all upgrades for 2014 and are now planning maintenance, enhancement and upgrades for 2015, Q1. We are listening very closely to all users of R18LabQMS for any comment or suggestions, so please let us know!
On the road
The R18LabQMS team will be at the World of Asphalt, March 17-19, 2015 in Baltimore, MD, if you plan on attending please stop by our booth and say hello!
– Gary Irvine