Quality inspection
In a manufacturing environment, defects can occur in a manufacturing process because of variations in factors like process, raw materials, design, and technology. The resulting low quality of products creates a larger inventory of defective lots, which leads to increased inspection effort.
A small delay in detecting a quality problem can result in large costs, lost opportunity, and lost brand value.
The quality early warning system (QEWS) in IBM® Predictive Maintenance and Quality evaluates evidence to determine whether the rate of failures is at an acceptable level. QEWS highlights combinations for which the evidence exceeds a specified threshold. QEWS can detect emerging trends earlier than traditional statistical process control, such as trend analysis. QEWS maintains a specified low rate of false alarms. Post-warning analysis of charts and tables identifies the point of origin, the nature and severity of the problem, and the current state of the process.
- suppliers (for example, the final manufacturing test yield of a procured assembly)
- manufacturing operations (for example, the acceptance rate for a dimensional check of a machined component)
- customers (for example, survey satisfaction ratings)
The quality inspection solution is not connected only to products. It is also connected to resource, process, material, and location entities. References to these entities are included in the PRODUCT_KPI and PRODUCT_PROFILE tables so that a product can be associated with any resource, process, material, location, or a combination of these entities during inspection analysis.
You can adjust the frequency at which data is captured and input to QEWS, and the frequency at which QEWS analyses are run, according to the requirements of each situation. For example, monitoring the quality levels of assemblies that are procured from a supplier might best be done on a weekly basis; monitoring the quality levels of units that are moving through a manufacturing operation might best be done on daily basis.