1. What is lean?
If you google “lean” you will probably find many definitions of lean. The definition that I prefer is “an initiative focus on eliminating all waste in manufacturing processes”. This definition is taken from the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Quality Progress magazine. In this article I want to highlight a lean initiative related to Inspection and Test (I&T) Requirements. Continue reading
Organizations have processes and every process has a certain amount of risk associated with it due to variations. By managing process variations we can minimize risks to achieve desirable results. Every process has input variables (X) that delivers outputs (Y). Changes in (Y) is dependent on changes in (X) and can be expressed as:
Y=f(X) Continue reading
There is an expression that “no two snowflakes are alike.” Similarly quality characteristics of parts produced from the same production process are not alike.
A simple production process, e.g., turning, can have variations in the machined diameter of a shaft because of play in the tooling or operators skill. These variations lead to “quality risks,” i.e., if variations in the process are not controlled there is a risk of producing out-of-specification machined shafts. Continue reading