Companies know ISO standards may be good for them, but they may need motivation to get certified. Manufacturing sectors have adopted ISO 9000 for three reasons: the value of the standard, the sales and marketing advantage, and company requirements.
Automotive suppliers are on the ball and have developed into an important economic factor. Numerous companies, including Weidmann Plastics Technology AG (Rapperswil, Switzerland), manufacture interior parts for well-known vehicle manufacturers.
Perhaps you have been given the job of selecting and purchasing a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) or some other geometric measurement system. Now you are comparing the various brands of equipment and trying to figure out what differentiates them, with software being a secondary consideration. If that is what you are doing, I am going to suggest that you may have the cart before the horse and would do well to reorder the decision-making process.
Threaded fasteners have been around and used to assemble a variety of products for so long that it is often assumed that everything is known about them. This confident assumption often leads operators to tighten a given fastener until it “feels” tight and they are done with it. In some applications this approach may prove satisfactory, but with critical applications, which can impact a financial bottom line through costly rework or warranty repairs, the old “feels tight, must be right” method is inadequate.
Many Tier 1 automotive manufacturers face the same seemingly impossible challenge-to ensure zero-defect quality while producing parts at parts-per-second speeds and at pennies-per-part prices. Failing to ensure absolute quality, even when producing low-priced parts, can result in significant penalties including containment, reduced profits or lost business. In manufacturing processes where force is required to form, shape or fasten the part-including processes such as crimping, riveting, stamping, machining or welding-process variation monitoring may provide the solution to that challenge.
I am continuously impressed
by the creative genius of mankind when it comes to all types of pursuits. One
area that stands out in this regard is that of calibration reports. The
greatest works of art and literature are no match for the literary and graphic
expressions presented in some of them. Unfortunately, too many of them are
designed to foster warm fuzzy feelings of security while saying little or
nothing at the same time.
Quite often, disappointing results or failed
projects can be the greatest opportunities for major continual improvement.
There are many dimensions to the quality
assurance profession, but the aspect that I’ve enjoyed the most is working on
breakthrough process and product improvements. Breakthrough improvements are
different from continual improvement in that they usually involve major
overhauls-instead of steady refinements-to a process. Breakthrough improvements
can quickly give a business a significant strategic advantage over the
competition.
Corrosion-protective coatings, or duplex coatings, consisting of a paint or plastic coating applied to galvanized steel sheet, are frequently used in manufacturing. As with any corrosion protection system, the thickness of the individual coatings is an important quality factor in duplex coatings
The theory and practice behind statistical process control (SPC) can be confusing as well as painful. Moving SPC to the shop floor can add another level of complexity to an already confusing subject. SPC delivers graphical process control information to the people who need it.
Inspection is a critical element of any quality program. In addition to the dimensional inspection of workpiece functional elements-typically with tight tolerances-evaluating products increasingly involves the inspection of free-form surfaces that are not relevant to the function.
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