Not too long ago, employees were required to check their personal lives at the door before work. The use of a mobile device at work was typically considered a faux pas—and in some cases, worthy of expulsion.
Your company makes sneakers from plants across the globe. As an executive, you have a responsibility to make sure that the products you are manufacturing are of sound quality and conform to company standards. Anything less is intolerable.
American society celebrates the act of eating as an extension beyond the need to appease basic bodily functions. It is a comforting experience. Reaching for a pretzel or a hamburger is rarely thought to be a dangerous activity. Since products are inspected and labeled they are always safe, right?
On Wednesday, May 15 at 2pm EDT, InfinityQS—a leading provider of manufacturing quality control software and solutions—will host a webinar titled “Quality Metrics—What You Need to Know.” The webinar is an educational session that will detail the importance of quality metrics and how to manage this valuable data.
When purchasing a new car, the last thing on your mind should be whether basic safety features function or not. After all, you have most likely put down a large sum of cash for the car, done your homework and done your test drive. The rest should be easy. Sometimes, though, things fall through the cracks.
On Wednesday, May 15 at 2pm EDT, InfinityQS—a leading provider of manufacturing quality control software and solutions—will host a webinar titled “Quality Metrics—What You Need to Know.” The webinar is an educational session that will detail the importance of quality metrics and how to manage this valuable data.
InfinityQS, the leading provider of manufacturing quality control solutions, prides itself on its ability to not only help manufacturers detect abnormalities and variations before they occur, but to also constantly reevaluate set processes and find areas to improve.
The prevalent use of mobile devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones are revolutionizing and simplifying the technology world. The increase in mobile device use has made the manufacturing world flatter. Not flatter in the literal sense like Christopher Columbus used to think, but flatter in the sense that data can be shared across the globe seemingly without limitations.
No matter what tech conference you attend, what breakout session you sit in on and what article pops up on your Google News alert, “Cloud” is dominating the tech space. For the past few years, in fact, the cloud has begun to play a more prominent role in the tech world, in large part due to the savings, efficiencies and enhancements it offers.
With over 300 types of control charts available, it can be overwhelming to select the most appropriate one for a specific situation. You may only be using a few charts for all your data analysis simply because you haven't explored further possibilities.
Do you know how much profit a 10% decrease in waste would generate?
If you’re like most quality professionals you have difficulty responding to that question. If that is the case, you will run into difficulties anytime you need to justify investments in improvement projects to your upper management.
Quality Digest's editor-in-chief Dirk Dusharme, and InfinityQS project manager Eric Weisbrod take an in-depth look at best practices for leveraging real-time quality data. Get a first hand look at new smartphone interfaces for dashboards and reports, the latest in mobile data collection and how a central quality hub puts executives, management and shop floor operators on the same page.
We’ve completed our setup with ProFicient and are now collecting process and product data from all of my production lines.
We all love our computers, don’t we? We love how quickly they can perform complex calculations, how easily they can be used to learn and communicate, and how much time they can save us in our jobs.
But computers can also be, well, kind of finicky, can’t they? They interpret things in a very precise manner. And if you’re not careful, that can make your job much harder.
It is the holiday season and one of the best things about this time of year is giving. However, as a quality professional, I see a big difference between giving and giveaway. There is never a good time of year for product giveaway.
Customer complaints are a part of doing business. That information you receive from people who spend money with your organization are giving you invaluable feedback. They care enough to say something. Just keep in mind the customers who do not say anything and take their business elsewhere. They are important, too.
Integration is a broad term used in quality circles to describe anything from manually merging data output from two different systems – such as a Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and Statistical Process Control (SPC) – to commanding Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC’s) from quality data input.
Like many things in the manufacturing world, the definition of “mobile data collection” changes based on company, environment, collection type, required functionality, and who knows how many other variables. After many discussions with many customers on this topic, some general definitions of mobile data collection include:
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is a system designed to integrate and provide information to flow from one department to another in a manageable fashion. ERP systems are very common in the business world and are designed accordingly, with a focus on business metrics.
Manufacturers love to hear the word “in control” when talking about processes. From a Statistical Process Control (SPC) point of view, an in-control process means that a process is stable or predictable. After putting in the work to get a process in control, how do you make sure it stays in control?
Over the years, InfinityQS has been fortunate enough to partner with the world’s most successful manufacturers, from multi-national giants to precision-oriented companies that dominate their markets by doing things right. The common thread between all these great companies is the relentless drive for improvement. They take ownership of quality.
Continuous process improvement does not always seem like a realistic task during what already feels like overly busy days. Work days (and nights) are spent conforming to customer compliance standards, investigating customer complaints or struggling with data collection hardware and software.
When investigating an SPC system, it can be difficult to build a business case for it. As a quality engineer, the value in having easy access to data seems obvious, but this can be a hard sell to an organization focused on cost and payback opportunities for capital projects. There are a number of ways an SPC system can be used to drive improvement and reduce costs.
The next stop on our customer success tour takes us to City of Industry, CA to meet Snak King, one of the largest snack food producers in the U.S. Snak King saved over $1 million on overfill costs and lowered customer complaints by more than 30% in the first year of their ProFicient deployment.
As you may already know, all the departments in a company are fully interrelated. Most of the time the quality department plays a central role that impacts all other departments’ metrics.
Our customers have come to understand that the InfinityQS platform is far more than traditional SPC. We’ve been working with top manufacturers to develop leading edge quality control for nearly 25 years. In that time, the business landscape has changed dramatically.
When it comes to statistical process control (SPC), it's easy to get lost in the weeds and forget what you are really trying to accomplish. The whole point is to make better products for the customer.
What is the greatest threat to the American manufacturer? The great recession? Close, but not quite. Corporate espionage? Save it for the movies. Obamacare? Let’s not go there.
Integration is a word that many people in manufacturing use, a subset of those interact with and a much smaller subset truly understands. From a very high level, it makes absolute sense that various systems should be aware of each other and communicate as much as possible. I’d like to make an addendum and change the last word in that sentence from "possible" to "practical".
In April we attended the 2012 IndustryWeek Best Plants Conference in Indianapolis, IN and joined more than 700 attendees for 2 days of plant tours, sessions and the IW Best Plants awards ceremony.
Having been involved in quality and process control for quite a few years now, I tend to read any article regarding a quality issue or anything related to new ideas for quality or process improvement.
The new ebook is an engaging and informative profile of the modern manufacturing quality expert and how he sees the world. In the ebook, InfinityQS vice president of statistical methods Steve Wise shares observations and wisdom gained over 25 years working with the world's most innovative manufacturers.
In his last blog, "Old McDonald had a Farm," my co-worker Britt Reid did a great job describing our package of tools called DMS/DCS which allows you to collect data from m
In our first installment of collecting attribute type data we went over how to set up a ProFicient project to collect defectives type data in a single data entry configuration.
I recently came across the quote by Henry J. Tillman that says ”’Getting there is half the fun’ became obsolete with the advent of commercial airlines.” This quote is funny because it’s true. In order to get the best price, you are more or less forced to take more than one flight, which often doubles the amount of time it takes to get to your destination.
Have you ever seen the massive cruise ships or oil tankers, weighing in at several thousand tons, being towed by the comparatively tiny tugboats? I’m amazed at their effortless ability to tug a vessel many times their size. Although they are not often utilized, when called upon they are extremely useful and powerful.
My last blog, "Who’ll Stop the Rain," explained how collecting too much data creates problems with control charts. Attempting to monitor too many items can be overwhelming and results in the user overlooking the "true" key characteristics of a process.
Old McDonald had a farm…O-L-E D-B. Not the words you had in mind? It’s okay, by the end of this entry you might never go back to the original!
When building InfinityQS projects and setting up data entry configurations, sometimes customers are in a quandary on whether they should use some of the pre-defined ProFicient "super descriptors" like Lot, Job, Shift and Serial Number.
"What are the advantages?"
"Should I save them for something special?"
Remember that early class or seminar you took on Statistical Process Control (SPC)? You know, the one that said if you can learn to understand and control the critical inputs of your process, the critical outputs would take care of themselves.
In the manufacturing world, it is really difficult to predict the future, and many times we make our decisions based on our gut feelings. While InfinityQS can't provide you with a crystal ball, we do have tools that can help you predict the effect of changes in specification limits.
You have four charts and only one computer screen. How do you consolidate to a multiple chart view to compare data without having to thumb through individual charts? You might be tempted to resort to flashy, "Matrix"-style moves, but fear not, there is a simpler approach that is just as effective and doesn't require stretching.
So, your ProFicient SPC system is humming along - you have a number of operator data collection projects, engineering reporting projects, supervisor review projects, and everything is perfectly organized, neat, clean, and easy-to-use - exactly how you dreamt of implementing the software.
I recently went to the movie Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, starring an incredible new young actor named Thomas Horn, along with Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. Have you heard of it?
Our customer tour continues at Schiff Nutrition's award winning manufacturing and distribution facility in Salt Lake City, UT. Schiff Nutrition is a leading nutritional supplement company with a portfolio of well-known brands that includes Tiger's Milk, Schiff Vitamins and Schiff Move Free.
My company is using ProFicient to collect SPC data and we are learning more about our processes every day.
Descriptors are powerful tools that are used often when we collect SPC data. They perform many functions including filtering data to a more specific level, assisting in the creation of special reports like the Lot Summary, and keeping track of serialized items.
Have you ever heard of "the flavor of the month?" The phrase refers to "a change that does not last." Sometimes we feel like we invest so much effort in making changes to our processes and at the end, these changes do not last forever.
Every time you collect data, are you selecting all types of charts and click, click, clicking away before you can even start? Do you have to perform many different types of tests on a sample at several different workstations? Is your index finger beginning to develop a twitch? Well, ProFicient may have a solution for you. It may be your only chance to combat that carpal tunnel syndrome!
Perhaps this blog's title is a misnomer. When I refer to "ugly" data I don't mean the actual data, I am referring to the file format that contains the data, but "Importing Data With a Less-Than-Cosmetic File Structure" just doesn't have much of a ring to it.
We've all pondered this question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? While I'm fascinated by this question I won't bore you with my theories. However, I have visited many manufacturing sites and sometimes there is a little confusion on whether to collect data from certain processes using the Process or Test functions in the Data Entry Configuration. Which is best, Process or Test?
InfinityQS DMS and ProFicient DCS recently support new handshaking features that allow them to communicate at improved data rates. The Data Collection Service no longer needs to wait for the Data Management Service to publish new values.
ProFicient SPC Software offers a lot of great ways to select, filter and sort data. Users often take advantage of Part, Process, Test, descriptors and time to ensure they’re getting the data they need.
Did you ever take the time to stop and watch the rain? I’m not talking about a sprinkle, I mean a real downpour or as we say in the South, a “gully washer”. Ok, I’ll translate that. A “gully washer” means that it rained so hard that the ditches were overflowing. This is a serious storm where the rain falls in sheets so thick that it’s hard to see through.
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we asked our customers what they were most thankful for with regards to their quality control systems. Our goal at InfinityQS is to make our users' jobs easier and help them be more successful, so we wanted to know what they were most thankful for. Here's what they said:
We’ve all experienced it from time to time-- one of your test results fails and you need to have your supervisor sign off on the subgroup. Or once you complete your setup, you need to have another operator or your supervisor sign off on the results. Essentially, you need to take the data you've captured in ProFicient to a higher level for approval.
If you have been using ProFicient’s COM port integration with Gage Server then you are probably like most users who have locally-connected devices from which data is read into your Data Entry Configurations in real-time.
You may have guessed it, but we take continuous improvement pretty seriously here at InfinityQS.
I just recently heard about the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” theory (thanks to Peter Goral). You probably already know the concept so I guess I’m a little late to the party. Anyway, the theory is that anyone in show business can be linked to Kevin Bacon through their film roles within six steps, or six degrees of Kevin Bacon or less.
It sounds like such a great concept – using wireless connections to import gage data into ProFicient SPC. But how to implement it? To follow is a case study of a bottling company that I recently visited.
A few weeks ago, I was attended the Quality Expo in Chicago, IL. I was there to give a presentation on global quality management and also represent InfinityQS at our expo booth.
Continuing on with our customer tour, our next stop after General Cable was NorthStar Battery in Springfield, MO.
With our 5th annual user conference less than a month away, I’d like to provide a “sneak preview” into one of the sessions that will frame many of the concepts and tools to be presented at this event.
Food Processing magazine recently released its annual "top 100" list of food manufacturers. The good news is that the food industry is steadily growing, with 19 of the top 25 seeing an increase in sales in 2010, and 18 of them also improving profitability.
Industry leading manufacturers will be presenting best practices for using SPC software at InfinityQS' fifth annual user conference this fall in San Francisco.
You are likely using your InfinityQS SPC database to collect a wide variety of data types for many different purposes. While this information might be collected in different locations and for difference purposes, there is probably some information that would be useful during another data entry or that may even be duplicated for another process.
Did you hear Newt Gingrich discussing lean manufacturing in last night’s Republican Presidential Debate in Ames, IA?
Consistent to his approach as an "ideas" candidate he said: "They should institute Lean Six Sigma across the entire federal government. A hard idea for Washington reporters to cover, but an important idea because it’s the key to American manufacturing success."
In my previous blog post, I shared a video that we shot at one of our customer's manufacturing sites, C-Axis. Our next visit was to Highland Heights, Kentucky where we met up with Rachel Humphrey, master black belt at General Cable.
Control limits are typically set at +/- 3 standard deviations for the statistic being plotted. That‘s how traditional Shewhart control charts have been constructed for nearly a century.
Over the past few months, we've been visiting our clients at their manufacturing facilities to talk to them about how they're using our SPC software. We were able to see our software in action and capture it on video.
Selecting the right control chart starts by knowing something about what you want the chart to say about the process – what questions do you want the chart answer?
Control charts, ushered in by Walter Shewhart in 1928, continue to provide real-time benefits in today’s most modern factories. When first introduced, there were seven basic types of control charts, divided into two categories: variable and attribute.
We've often talked about traceability in terms of the food supply chain and the importance of being able to trace ingredients back to the supplier. But what about the automotive industry? Just as important as the safety of the food we eat is the safety of the vehicles we drive every day.
Dr. Shewhart’s original control charts have been around for nearly 100 years. Since then, many different quality control texts have been written which highlight modifications to his techniques. Most of these enhancements have been born of the need to better support modern manufacturing methods and challenges.
ChainLink Research just came out with a new study on the most pressing challenges within the food supply chain. Not surprisingly, quality was high on the list:
The Situation: The shop floor operator is using a basic data entry project, such as the one shown below. When the operator finishes taking measurements for a lot, you would like for him to print out a certificate of compliance with minimum effort.
We recently announced that Dr. Douglas Montgomery will be the Keynote speaker at our fifth annual user conference, Infusion 2011, on October 16-19 in San Francisco.
Over the past several years, we at InfinityQS have seen countless examples of manufacturers who are challenged to improve the quality of the materials coming from the supply chain. As a quality control software company, our mission to help customers improve product quality is no longer limited to the production floor.
This month's edition of Quality Magazine features an article I wrote about how mobile data collection technologies are extending quality systems beyond the plant.
I spent part of last week working the InfinityQS booth at the 2011 ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement. I won’t go into the booth stories here, but I would like to share a few interesting things about the show. Well, they were interesting to me so I hope you find them as such!
I recently returned from a week in Germany where I attended the 25th annual Stuttgart CONTROL show and international trade fair for quality assurance. There, our new channel manager, Michael Hines, and I jointly manned a booth with one of InfinityQS’ European distributors in Germany, STATCON.
A few weeks ago, I spoke at the Innovations in Food Safety Conference in Harrisburg, Pa. I was featured in the "Profiles in Innovation" session which highlighted mini-keynotes from three different perspectives in the food supply chain.
A few days ago, Industry Week published an article titled Prescriptions for Supply Chain Success. The article focuses on building quality early in the process, instead of relying on "back-end testing".
How do organizations confirm that supplier products comply with critical quality standards? For the most part, companies rely on inspectors to check incoming materials. Their results are compared with the company’s own quality standards and supplier-generated documents such as Certificates of Analysis (COA’s). Based on results, inspectors either accept or reject a shipment.
Last week, InfinityQS exhibited at the Food Safety Summit in Washington, DC. This two-day event provided food safety professionals with an opportunity to learn new strategies and discover new solutions for ensuring the safety of their products.
This week I had the pleasure of attending the 2011 Quality Conference sponsored by Quality Magazine. The conference was held in Charlotte, North Carolina near the University of North Carolina at Charlotte campus.
In February, I gave a presentation to attendees of the Pacific Design & Manufacturing Show. This event took place in Anaheim, CA and attracted manufacturing professionals from thousands of companies. My presentation was titled "Quality Management Strategies that Slash Costs and Reduce Waste".
Here is a video recording of my presentation:
Anyone who has participated in the InfinityQS Fundamentals Training class in the Chantilly office probably has heard me say: “I love toolbar buttons!” This week, I discovered a new use that has been present the whole time – I just didn’t know it.
I just returned from an FDA meeting in Silver Spring, Maryland. There, I attended an open meeting entitled FDA Food Safety Modernization Act: Title III – A New Paradigm for Importers. FDA members were the primary presenters, and they focused on the newly passed laws meant to enhance food safety.
In my last blog, we discussed the importance of using control limits that are calculated from a true measure of the process variation. Now that we have the correct limits, we can use them to monitor the process behavior.
The decision to change our corporate logo was not made lightly. InfinityQS has a reputation as the industry leader in real-time SPC solutions, so making a change to a well-established brand involves an element of risk.
It’s 10:00pm; do you know where your control limits are?
Prevent problems before they occur, ensure quality and increase productivity.
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