How to Automate IndySoft

Every measurement a factory trusts rests on a calibration date

IndySoft is calibration management software. IndySoft EAM tracks calibration, tooling and maintenance for aerospace and defence, automotive, energy, life sciences, oil and gas and manufacturing, and a Commercial Lab Management edition serves the labs those industries send work to.

What lives in it is every measuring instrument an operation depends on, and every date attached. The torque wrench on the line. The micrometer in the inspection room. The pressure gauge on the test rig. Each has a due date, a tolerance, and a certificate proving it read true last time anyone checked.

The reason this matters is enormous. If a gauge is found out of tolerance, every part it measured since its last good calibration is suspect. That is not a paperwork problem. It is a recall conversation, and its size depends on how long the gauge was drifting and how good the records are.

So the record is the product. Measurements mean something only because the record says the instrument was trustworthy at the time.

A gage goes out for calibration and disappears

Plenty of instruments cannot be calibrated in house. They go to an outside lab, and the moment they leave the building the record stops updating itself.

Somebody has to know where it went, when it is due back, and whether it passed. That means signing into the lab's customer portal, or emailing to ask, then downloading the certificate when it appears and filing it against the right asset. Some labs post certificates in days. Some take a month and never mention it.

Running a commercial lab is the same problem inverted. Instruments arrive from customers who want a status they cannot see, a turnaround estimate they have to email for, and a certificate delivered somewhere. Quotes go out and sit. Purchase orders land in a mailbox. Service contracts renew and nobody notices until the work stops arriving.

Either way it is the same afternoon: one person, a list of instruments, and a set of other companies' websites.

The calibration schedule only knows what the lab told it

IndySoft handles the inside of this very well, and it is worth setting out how much is included.

Every client licence includes the calibration, tooling, maintenance, uncertainty and trend analysis modules, so uncertainty calculation and trend analysis are not add-ons. Automated alarm setup raises due dates before they land, certificate design lets a lab produce its own format, and real-time metrics give the KPI view. IndyGo handles asset scanning and inventory on mobile devices, with barcoding throughout. For off-site work, Automated Tech Synch keeps a technician's field calibrations in step with the lab. EasyCert lets people browse and download calibration data, and Commercial Lab Management adds work orders and integrated invoicing.

All of that is true of assets IndySoft holds and results somebody entered or synced.

The wall is the one every asset system meets. An instrument sitting at a third-party lab is a row with a status somebody typed. Its actual status is on that lab's portal. The same goes for a customer's purchase order, a supplier's lead time on a replacement standard, and an accreditation body's directory listing exactly what a lab's scope covers. Each is a fact your schedule depends on and cannot see.

An asset that left the building can still be accounted for

The lab's portal holds the real status, and the schedule can carry it the same morning.

Every asset out at a third-party lab checked against that lab's portal each morning, so a certificate posted overnight is filed against the asset that day rather than in a fortnight. Anything overdue at the lab flagged with how long it has been sitting, the number deciding whether production waits or a spare gets pulled.

An out-of-tolerance result treated as the alarm it is: the certificate read, the affected asset identified, and the work measured since its last good calibration assembled for review before anyone asks. Supplier sites checked for lead times on a replacement standard. For a lab, quote follow-ups, customer purchase orders and contract renewal dates gathered from the customers' own systems.

Where the line sits is straightforward. Reading portals, downloading certificates and building lists happens unattended. Marking an asset in tolerance, releasing it to production, issuing a certificate or telling a customer their instrument failed is prepared and waits for the metrologist. A calibration record is a statement about measurement that somebody signs.

Paperwork can travel back on its own

The certificate, the lead time and the scope listing are all somewhere a browser can reach and the schedule cannot. The instrument travelled to the lab and back. There is no reason the certificate has to be carried by hand too.

WebRun is an agent that drives a real Chrome browser, signed in as your technicians are. It opens the calibration lab's portal, a supplier site or a customer's own system, reads what is there, downloads what is ready, and reports what moved and what has not.

It runs on your schedule inside your own private environment. Sessions are not shared between workflows, a workflow can be locked to a named list of domains, and any run can be watched and stopped.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names what it opens.