newbie would like to know what is required to make this kind of program

[runabout6]

I am really new to all this so please bear with me.
I am a quality manager in a small machine shop and I am trying to implement an ISO program for the shop. One of the prerequisites is that we create a history for our measuring instruments and that they are to be calibrated periodically. I was thinking that is would be great if I could create a program that would let me know when these tools need to be calibrated and have a history of their condition. Sort of on the same line as Task in Outlook. Can I do this in Access or do I need to incorporate Visual Basic or can I do this at all with these two programs?

Thanks

[pbaldy]

What you describe could certainly be done in Access (there would probably be some VBA used within). Generally speaking you'd have a table for your instruments and a one-to-many related table for calibrations. The key field from the instruments table would be included in the calibrations table, along with the date and anything else relative to the calibration (who did it, etc). If an instrument had been calibrated 3 times, it would have 3 records in this table.

Depending on your specifics your instrument table could include a field to indicate the frequency of the calibration (number of days for example), or perhaps a "next calibration date" field. Either would allow you to produce a report of upcoming and/or overdue calibrations, a history of calibrations done, etc.