The purpose of this article is to guide you through locating and generating Forward and Reverse Traceability reports in MET/TEAM and provides a brief use case for both.  These reports show what assets have been calibrated by or used in the calibration of assets.  The reports themselves are useful for auditing support of traceability and recall efforts.

Where to find the reports

The reports are tied to asset work orders and their creation is located within the work order window.  Let’s look at a scenario where a standard has been found out of tolerance and we need to know what assets it was used to calibrate (reverse trace) as well as the units used to calibrate the standard itself (forward trace).  First we will pull up the asset record of the standard through the Maintenance->Assets Find Assets window.  Here we searched for a Standard and have selected the 5700A.  Double click to open the Edit Asset window.

 

 

In the Edit Asset window, we will select the History / Notes tab (1).  This is a listing of all work orders this unit has against it. We will select the most recent work order (2) and then open the Standards / Accreditations tab (3).

 

At the bottom of the Edit Work Order screen we will see the RT (Reverse Trace) and FT (Forward Trace) drop-down menus.  Opening either of these will present us with the option of Printing (create a PDF) or Exporting (create a .xls file) the information.

 

Reverse Trace 

 Opening RT will present us with Date and Depth selections.  The Start and End Dates are to define what period we want to cover for pulling asset ‘touches’ of other assets into the report: what this unit was used to calibrate and when.  The Depth is how far we want these touches to extend.  At two levels we will see what the standard calibrated and what those units (if any) touched.  The more levels of depth, the longer the chain of interactions we will see.  Typically, we will work at a depth of 1 or 2, but can go up to 25 touches deep.

 

 

For this example, we chose to create a PDF.  This standard has not been used to calibrate anything during the period selected as indicated by the report generated.

 

 

Forward Trace

The FT report is used to show what units were used to calibrate the asset we’ve pulled up.  Selecting the Forward Traceability option presents us with the option of marking duplicate branches.  This shows any chains that are interdependent on each other’s calibration or in other words, circular calibrations.  This is important to ensure proper traceability during audits.

 

The report that is generated is similar to the Reverse Traceability report.

 

Takeaway

The use and generation of Forward and Reverse Traceability reports are important to know.  Using these as a tool for audit support and asset recalls when a standard is out of tolerance will greatly aide in the support of those efforts.  The built-in function of these reports in MET/TEAM further enhance the function of asset tracking and quality assurance in daily operations.