A Proposal for a Standard Calibration Data Format

For nearly 30 years, Fluke MET/CAL® Calibration Management Software has played a significant role in automating the calibration process. Our asset management databases, MET/TRACK® (now discontinued) and the newer MET/TEAM® software help customers maintain, manage and report calibration and repair history and other asset data.  All of that puts us in a unique position to propose the creation of a standard format for recording and sharing calibration data and building calibration software around that principle.

At present, every company that produces calibration and asset management software creates its own systems for collecting, storing and sharing data. The adoption of a standard solution would require systems that compete with each other to accept competitor system data in addition to its own.  Generally, it’s not in a supplier’s best interest to cooperate with competition to make it easy for customers to go with other suppliers. 
  
But from a user’s perspective, a standard data format could potentially yield a lot of benefits. Having one format would enable companies that provide calibration services to handle a wide variety of workload in a single database. That would make it easier for them to analyze calibration and asset data and thus make smarter decisions about equipment.

We’re not the first people to think about creating a standard data format. In 2013, the concept of the Measurement Information Infrastructure (MII) was introduced by Mark Kuster. This idea represents an effort within the Calibration and Metrology industry to standardize formats for a variety of data types, including scopes of accreditation, instrument specifications, and calibration data. While the MII has focused its early work on scopes of accreditation, it was because of this ongoing project that Andrew and I first started looking into ways to develop a standard for calibration data.

In 2012, the Association of German Engineers developed VDI/VDE-2623, which defines and establishes a Calibration Data Exchange Format. VDI/VDE-2623 establishes a rigid Extensible Markup Language (XML) data structure with both required and optional fields. While some of the data covered by this standard may not be applicable in every situation, using the work already conducted in developing the data structure is ideal for moving this effort forward in a meaningful way.

Our proposed solution
We propose creating a defined construction in nine categories that builds on the work done by the Association of German Engineers. The categories describe each field that is mandatory in VDI/VDE 2623 as well as those required by ISO 17025:2017 and ANSI Z540.3.

Each category requires a count of expected fields that matches the total fields used in the category, including additional subfields. Additional subfields add optional data that is listed in the VDI standard, company data that is needed, or extraneous descriptions. Additionally, the total of all the fields used must match the listed expected fields for the entire data package found in the Order category. The proposed data categories are:

• Order: Lists the total expected fields in the data package, and must match the total fields used throughout the package.
• Technical Items: Houses details about the device under test, standards in use, and all additional references. All assets in use for the maintenance or calibration event need to be associated to a unique identifier.
• Order ID: Describes the specific details about where, when and who will be doing the calibration of maintenance.
• Buyer: Describes the device provider or owner details, like address and names.
• Supplier Data: Houses all details about the calibration laboratory, company name and addresses.
• Inspection Plan: Describes the specific procedure that will be performed during the calibration or maintenance.
• Inspection Plan Characteristics: Describes what data and how much data is expected to be collected.
• Calibration Results: Houses the collected results per section.
• Additional Data Fields: Designed to house any additional data that the device designer, procedure creator, accreditation or law requires.

Each category contains a number of mandatory fields, but can also be expanded to contain additional date for specific applications. Using a simple string-based data format that can be expanded and converted to other formats, we want to make this format flexible enough to fit with the structure of any existing software. What do you think of this proposal? Feel free to post a comment.

This post was taken from a paper authored by  Andrew Chapman and Michael Johnston and presented at the 2018 Measurement Science Conference and again at the 2018 National Conference of Standards Laboratories Intenrational. If you’d like to read the paper in its entirety you can find it here.  If you happen to be in the market for calibration automation and asset management software, you might want to get a 60-day free trial of our MET/CAL Calibration Management Software. You can do that here.