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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.
Welcome to Quality Digest’s 2008 Flowchart/Process Simulation Software Directory. The companies in this buyers guide create or distribute software whose primary function is to aid in analyzing a company’s existing designs or operations to create important process-improvements and cost-savings opportunities. Functions include the flowchart, as in a schematic representation of a process used to help the user visualize the content or to find the flaws in the process; and process simulation, such as viewing a computer simulation that mimics a company’s operations to determine optimal conditions, bottlenecks, or sensitivity to process changes.
Included in this buyers guide are company names, addresses, telephone and fax numbers, and web addresses. Further information that has been provided to us, such as descriptions of the software modules/suites, is available online at www.qualitydigest.com/content/buyers-guides.
For some, Labor Day signals the end of summer as preparations for autumn and the accompanying holidays begin. As is customary in some locales, warm weather clothes, including one’s white wardrobe and shoes, are returned to the closet until next spring. Children and students go back to school, much to the delight of their parents, and hopefully to the excitement of their teachers.
Chances are one of the kids’ first assignments will be to draft a report on the activities of their summer vacation. Not to be left out of this assignment, I thought it appropriate that I pen a few lines about one of our recent trips. There were no death-defying rides on some monster roller coaster, no surfing in shark-infested waters or aerial descents with a parachute from a plane, just a sensible trip to Chicago for my wife and me.
During the 1920s, a British statistician named Ronald Fisher put the finishing touches on a method for making breakthrough discoveries. Some 70 years later, Fisher's method, now known as design of experiments, has become a powerful software tool for engineers and researchers.
But why did it take engineers so long to begin using DOE for innovative problem solving? After all, they were ignoring a technique that would have produced successes similar to the following modern-day examples:
• John Deere Engine Works in Waterloo, Iowa, uses DOE software to improve the adhesion of its highly identifiable green paint onto aluminum. In the process, the company has discovered how to eliminate an expensive chromate-conversion procedure. Savings: $500,000 annually.
• Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York, learns via DOE software that it needs only to retool an existing machine instead of making a huge capital purchase for a new one. The solution means improved, light-sealing film-pack clips used by professional photographers. Savings: Setup time drops from eight hours to 20 minutes; scrap reduces by a factor of 10, repeatability increases to 100 percent and $200,000 is not spent on a new machine.
Because information in document form drives nearly every action in any organization, the ability to control this information usually means the difference between success and failure. Thus, document control remains the single most critical quality assurance discipline. As with many other systems, document control is more successful if it's simple, intuitive and user-friendly. And the first step toward this end is deciding exactly which documents need to be controlled.
Documents requiring control
"Do I need to control this document?" is one of the most frequently asked questions in organizations working toward, or maintaining, a formal management system. Given the universe of documents possibly requiring control, the question is understandable. Besides, most people would rather not control a document if they don't have to.
The ISO 9001:2000 standard provides a quick answer to the question of what must be controlled. The first sentence of section 4.2.3 on document control states, "All documents required by the quality management system shall be controlled." This means that if a document addresses or relates to any of the issues in ISO 9001:2000, it must be controlled. Here are some questions to ask when determining whether a document should be controlled:
