As more and more organizations contact us wanting to install particle and or environmental monitoring systems, or wanting to expand their existing monitoring systems, continued thought has to go into “how many spare instruments should we carry”?
Spare instruments are not only useful in the event an instrument fails or is contaminated, they are also useful when it comes to sending your instruments in for annual calibration. If you have NO spares and you need to take an instrument offline for annual calibration by the supplier, then you potentially have a problem. Having a spare on the other hand, would enable you to quickly swap a device in and out and rotate instruments for calibration as needed.
On the same token, as facilities expand, the number of spares should be reviewed. While keeping 1 spare counter for every 5 – 10 you have online and active may be OK, having that same 1 spare counter 3 years down the track when you now have 150 online active particle counters, is potentially starting to get pretty risky. More spare instruments also means that you can send away more instruments for calibration simultaneously versus sending them one by one. It all comes down to risk management at the end of the day and how facilities wish to manage these risks
