Greetings:
This is a question brought on by unfortunate circumstances. A plant is being closed…that I work at. Mfg is coming to a halt in the 3rd qtr after which the lab will cease operation. Should the instrumentation be calibrated a final time after the last samples are completed to essentially bracket those samples by a valid pre and post calibration record? Due diligence might suggest ‘yes’ but the risk of this becoming an issue is probably slim. It is important to note that the company in general is not closing only the specific plant. Any opinions would be appreciated.
Regards,
Socrates
Is there any formal decommissioning or retirement plan to be done? Or is it just shut and lock the doors when the last production run is complete? Obviously a decommissioning or retirement plan would have things like migration of data, archiving of data till end of retention period. Any maintenance and calibration should be adapted which would mean final calibrations completed.
I have been in a similar situation.
We have done a closing calibration:
- to have documented evidence that any piece of equipment has been in the validated state u/i the last activity performed with that equipment
- when the equipment is transferred to another site, to have evidence that an OOT identified during calibration at the receiving site is due to transportation and has no impact on the quality of the product/results produced at the sending site.