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So you have a customer complaint. It’s not just any complaint, but a huge one from your biggest customer. The problem affects millions of dollars in business and threatens the survival of your company. Are you going to take action? Of course! You put together a team of top players and attack it head-on.
Team members investigate the problem and perform a detailed 5-Why analysis. They start with the problem statement and ask, “Why did that happen?” repeatedly, drilling down deeper with each iteration:
Problem: There were seven data errors in reports issued to our largest customer in the last month
• Why? Because lab reports are getting in the wrong project folders.
• Why? Because the project numbers are written illegibly on the folders.
• Why? Because the customer service representatives are rushed when preparing folders.
• Why? Because there are only two representatives taking calls for all divisions.
Essential in quality control, vision-based multisensor metrology allows supplied components and materials to be quality-checked before, during, and after incorporation into a final product. It can also provide an audit trail enabling a point of failure to be accurately pinpointed in time as well as providing a means of early detection and diagnosis of the problem. Early correction can save time, reduce waste, save money, and most important, safeguard a company’s reputation for reliability and quality.
This is how our readers define quality. (Note: these definitions are straight from our database and have not been edited.)
"Quality itself has been defined as fundamentally relational: 'Quality is the ongoing process of building and sustaining relationships by assessing, anticipating, and fulfilling stated and implied needs.'
"Even those quality definitions which are not expressly relational have an implicit relational character. Why do we try to do the right thing right, on time, every time? To build and sustain relationships. Why do we seek zero defects and conformance to requirements (or their modern counterpart, six sigma)? To build and sustain relationships. Why do we seek to structure features or characteristics of a product or service that bear on their ability to satisfy stated and implied needs? (ANSI/ASQC.) To build and sustain relationships. The focus of continuous improvement is, likewise, the building and sustaining of relationships. It would be difficult to find a realistic definition of quality that did not have, implicit within the definition, a fundamental express or implied focus of building and sustaining relationships."
Here's the nightmare: You arrive at work to find your best customer has just returned $10,000 worth of precision ceramic parts. They are all neatly boxed and sitting on the inspection room floor with a nasty note saying that they are all out of tolerance. You stand to lose one of your best contracts, not to mention your job, unless you get to the bottom of the problem right away.
So you immediately go to your tool crib and remove your precision digital micrometer from its padded box where it lay with its anvils neatly closed.
First, you check the calibration sticker. The micrometer has a six-month calibration schedule and was calibrated five months ago. No problem there. You check the absolute zero setting on the micrometer. It reads 0.00000". Exactly where you set it when you put a fresh battery in last month. So the micrometer should be OK. The micrometer and the parts have been at the same temperature for several hours, so you should be OK there, too. It's time to check the parts. You remeasure every one of them. They're in spec. All of them.
Welcome to Quality Digest’s 2008 SPC Software Directory featuring 93 companies that responded to our requests for information. These companies produce or distribute software applications assisting with ANOVA, capability analysis, control charting, data mining, DOE, FMEA, gauge R&R, regression analysis, reliability analysis, and similar functions. If provided, descriptions of their products can be found at www.qualitydigest.com/content/buyers-guides . As with all Quality Digest guides, the 2008 SPC Software Directory is in no way meant to endorse or exclude any specific organization. Rather, it should be used as the starting point in the data-gathering process. Readers are encouraged to contact these companies directly for more information.
During the last 30 years, giant steps have been taken to repair the damage done to the environment by industry. In the United States and elsewhere, rivers that were once dead and filled with toxic pollutants now support fish and are being used for recreation. Humankind’s attitude toward and relationship with nature has drastically changed.
Similarly, government bodies across the globe are planning for future needs and, through legislation, helping to prevent pollution from troublesome chemicals such as lead and cadmium. Companies have figured out ways to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals from their products or manufacturing processes but face new challenges in trying to replicate performance in environmentally friendly ways.
The need for control over manufacturing processes has never been higher than in today's
environment. As this need has increased, so too has the requirement for better management of the equipment used to measure and control manufacturing processes. Fundamental to managing this equipment properly is ensuring that it's correctly calibrated and maintained.
Unfortunately, while many managers are faced with managing a growing number of instruments and increased responsibility, their resources are being reduced. One popular method for minimizing the resources necessary is the implementation of commercial off-the-shelf calibration-management software (CMS).
Desirable CMS Features
Maintains and retrieves master equipment, calibration history and measurement data records
Automatically schedules future calibration due dates
Imagine that you oversee the quality control department for a small lug nut manufacturer that supplies the major U.S. automakers. One night, as you're watching the news, the station features a story about a car that lost one of its wheels while traveling more than 55 miles per hour. The car hit a guard rail, and all persons in the vehicle were badly injured. The ensuing investigation determines that the wheel failed because its lug nuts sheered off.
The problem ultimately is traced to a torque wrench, used during the lug nut manufacturer's final inspection, that hadn't been calibrated in more than 10 years. Consequently, it displayed incorrect torque values. You can't understand how this could have happened because your company is registered to ISO 9000 and recently achieved QS-9000 compliance. Upon reflection, however, you realize that the wrench never was entered into the calibration system and therefore never addressed during the audit.
Delivering systemic change to a large institution requires more than sound organizational reengineering or optimizing the operating process. Change must be identified, energized, and directed. Potentially sympathetic but undecided hearts and minds must be won, and opposition, whether open or covert, must be understood, met, and overcome. Ultimately, most stakeholders must see change as not just possible, but preferable to the status quo. To paraphrase a slogan from President Obama’s campaign, large coalitions must be given change they can believe in. In that respect, regardless of what you think of his governing agenda—and thoughtful detractors are legion—it’s hard to argue with Obama’s success in campaigning for change he believes in.
When it comes to quality software solutions, it often seems as though there’s something for everyone. Standards compliance, process simulation, and flowcharting
are just some of the solutions that exist for the intrepid explorer of higher quality. Software isn’t just being used in the boardroom, either. Increasingly, computerized systems are finding their way down to the shop floor, where real-time software programs can help ensure that processes remain controlled.
This section contains the ISO Standards Software buyers guide and the Flowcharting/Process Simulation buyers guide. These guides offer a plethora of solutions for your organization. Because there is such a wide variety of statistical process control software, we’ve given that subject its own section. Check behind the SPC Software tab for more information on providers of these solutions.
