ProCalV5 Software

Having worked with and validated numerous systems for various pharmaceutical and biotech companies over the years, including other calibration and maintenance management systems, I found ProCalV5 to be the easiest to work with, validate, and implement. The system is intuitive, flexible, and mature, thus reducing the time and effort from initial purchase to Production roll-out to the end users. The customer service and support staff at PTI are extremely knowledgeable and responsive. Response time to questions or any concerns was almost immediate in many cases. There is no question that my organization is 100% satisfied with our decision to move forward with ProCalV5 as our calibration and maintenance management solution.

The migration consisted of 32,000 tags, 10,000 instrument loops, 1000 motors, 1000 relief valves, 19 years of calibration history and a customized test equipment data base. We were quite concerned about the 19 years of history and insuring that it remained intact.
We perform calibrations, motor and relief valve pm's daily, the ProCalV5 engineers provided methodology and tools to make database validation possible, a dauntingly task with 19 years of history and helped developed a plan to minimize database down time when switching to the new ProCalV5 database. The Procal team worked tirelessly to find ways to mimic the functionality the we had built into the customized Loveland database. We were on a strict time table and the Procal deployment initiative met the milestones which allowed us to stay on schedule. Prime Technologies provided two levels of training, administrator and technician training. The project was a total success. We have had two major outside audits since implementation, the Procal database and reporting tool greatly contributed to the successful audit. Prime Technologies was extremely supportive before we purchased, during the implementation and now two years after go live they are very responsive to our requests.

I have used ProCalV5 for 2 years now. Updates are effortlessness and support is second to none. ProCalV5 is easy to use and navigate. It is much better than others out there. Many features are able to be customized by you. Reports are a breeze and easy to filter. Saves time and man hours. I would recommend ProCalV5, if you are looking to start a calibration program or replace existing one. Great software!

First off, ProCalV5 is the most robust Calibration Management System on the market. It not only allows you to track, maintain, and schedule calibration but you can track spare parts, manage PM's and Work Orders as well. We have used ProCalV5 for 2 years now after looking at several different software packages. There is nothing better than ProCalV5.

Overall impressions of the product and service are excellent. Easy to use intuitive software, helpful personnel.

ProCalV5 is the best software I have researched and implemented, and there have been quite a few by now. There are many pros that come to mind, the following are the most important for our organization:
* Extreme flexibility to customize the software to your needs, like changing field names or adding many user defined fields.
* Never ending list of features. You can use it as a basic calibration recall system with the minimum information you need or go all the way to Gages R&R.
* Very user friendly and you can customize different level of access for group of employees or individual employees.
* Excellent customer support, from the staff that works with you to import your existing data into the system, to the trainers to the tech support folks, when you have an issue or need help. The response time is just amazing.
* If your organization needs a particular feature or change in the software they will work with you to make it happen.
* ProCalV5 is not just a tool calibration software, it is also a equipment maintenance software. It is so flexible that we are actually using it to manage our inspectors mandatory eye exams.
* Great audit trial, reminders, calibration/maintenance history, etc. They are great tools for your ISO/AS certification, employee accountability and not forgetting anything.
* Multi-site option, allowing you to manage tools/equipment segregated by site and the level of access of employees or different sites.

Regarding cons, I can not really think of any. Whenever there has been something that we have liked the software to do differently (I can think of once or twice in several years) the ProCalV5 folks have made it happen.

This is a great soft ware that makes my job much easer. I look forward to audits now!
I would like to be able to edit some of the names of the data fields to better suite our needs but overall I have been very pleased with this product.

My company has used Procal for 5 years and we are truely impressed with the overall ease of use , flexibility, detail and most importantly excellent customer support. Anytime we need assistance or want to customize a report, the team at Primatech are always there to take care of us. I would highly recommend the use of this product for the management of any serious calibration program.

From an I.T.-perspective, the software implementation and configuration tasks were painless. I especially like the training and configuration workshop concept that Prime Technologies follows. As opposed to other I.T. projects, where we implement and then train, I thought this process made more sense. It allowed our users to see and learn all aspects of the system, configure the system, and then try it to make sure it functions as intended.
After the workshop, validation documentation, production implementations, data migrations, and official cutover activities are conducted.

As for the actual software, I would not be able to comment on its effectiveness.

Pros:
The product works great and has lots of functionality.
Great for multiple users.
Easy to print out reports and Cal Certs.

Cons:
Administrator Features could be a little more robust. Would be nice to see who has been idle.

Overall:
This is great product and well worth the money. Every time we call them they come up with a solution in a timely manner. Sometimes even same day. We have over 400,000 calibrations in the system and still runs smooth. They were very supportive when we rolled out the system.

Praxair selected Prime Technologies to implement the ProCal instrument calibration software in all global production facilities. The Prime technologies team has exceeded expectations supporting Praxair in design, configuration, training and validation of the solution. Great response by all Prime team members, excellent demonstrated customer service with response, professionalism which has resulted in a project which is on schedule/on budget and most importantly meets our expected results.
This project will run through 2015 and we have no concerns with completion that meets our global customer requirements.

I personally would highly recommend this to anyone in charge of or performing calibrations especially with respect to audit potential of work performed.

Pros

Good layout with regard to actual work flow.

Cons

Automatic setup to show or not show limits and accuracies at startup

Very good program. Needs a little help in the reporting area.

Pros

Easy to use and a familiar platform that is windows based. Very good implementation plan and purchased validation documentation was ver good. Excellent product support

Cons

The reporting structure needs some work. Management and metrics are difficult to access as most of the reports are item based. A calibration report summary does not exist and the report has a single page for each item and can not be exported to a spreadsheet in a format that is usable. There needs to be a selection of single page high level summary reports. Not enough definitive separation (or explanation) of items like Loops vs Systems. There is a lot of overlap in these types of data screens. Better documentation of usage of these items with examples would be good to add. Email reminder system needs to not send an email to equipment owners when ther is nothing due.

I would purchase again.

Pros

Ease of use. Nice features

Cons

The calibration points & test points don't always function properly.

More initial training and help with the setup..

Pros

The special features are nice and will be better when we get more data input into the data base.

Cons

Not being able to search for the serial number was a big issue for us. We did get this resolved by changing the data migration parameters but the search feature could use more help. The validation of the system is very expensive and would be nice if it could be broken down into areas that the customer can choose to validate. As more features are added we could validate as we go, which would spread the cost out.

An excellent software package, after reviewing many other CMS packages, ProCal was by far the best when considering functionality and cost

Pros

Ease of use for non-computer literate technicians
excellent reporting and complete overview of all calibration activity.
Greta improvement to business workflow using ProCal work orders.
Wide array of options to suit our needs and how we perform calibrations

Cons

Have had no problems

Satisfactory!

Pros

I had a wonderful training with Rocco S. He visited our company last year to demo the ProCal system we purchased in 2009. I am delighted that our company is now using this software.

Cons

I had a very bad experience with customer support when I tried to call the 24/7 hotline. I did not get back any response from the issue I was calling about. I am not sure if issues have been addressed or not. I never call the hotline again. I hope the hotline folks can have better customer support service-friendly, courteous and kind.

Would'nt know how to manage without it!

Pros

Has helped us bring together our records nicely. Very convenient to have our entire customer base and their assets all under one system. Asset management and evaluation possibilites are powerful. Search Query is extremely valuable.

Cons

Would love to be able to edit notes under instruments and be able to change customer names.

include suport online or call hot line help.

Pros

Very good program

Cons

No good examples of how to setup up the different modules in Procal.

The program is easy to use. It meets the needs I have for the calibration of customer instruments. Technical help has been very good.

Pros

Well organized. Easy to move from one field to another, and understand interaction between them.
Relatively easy to use.

CONS that do not fit below:
Rather than providing the initial calibration program without defaults, I think it would help to discuss defaults with the purchaser and set some basic ones for the customer before sending providing the software.

Cons

I do not like the fact that the NOTES can not be modified once they are saved, report not finalized.
It would be helpful if you could modify an INSTRUMENT record and have that change show in calibrations that have not been finalized. Occasionly, we find an error in the way we entered an INSTRUMENT record when we enter the calibration; have to take an instrument out of a WORK ORDER, change the INSTRUMENT record and then put the instrument back into the WORK ORDER again.
The order that is presented in WORK ORDER and CALIBRATION records (numerical, asending) should be changed to decending. Most often you are looking for a new record, not the first one you did.
Difficult to add or modify REPORTS for our needs.
NOTES, It would be nice to have a note entered in the INSTRUMENT record that could be selected to always show in the calibration notes for that instrument.