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Two vision sensors are used at the station where caps are pressed onto the O-ring loaded on the assembly dial.
Supplying parts to the automotive industry leaves no room for error. That’s why Miniature Precision Components Inc. (MPC) uses three vision sensors to error-proof the automated assembly of oil caps at its Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, facility. MPC’s four manufacturing plants generate approximately $167 million per year supplying the automotive and commercial industries with high-quality, injection-molded parts and assemblies.
“Machine vision has been a key component of our automation strategy for the last seven years,” says Shane Harsha, MPC manufacturing engineering manager.
An automated oil-cap assembly system is a case in point. MPC engineer Brian Champion recently augmented traditional tooling and sensor technology with Checker vision sensors from Cognex Corp. of Natick, Massachusetts.
Although the Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG) report on body armor identified a range of issues involving Army testing processes and documentation dating back to 2007, both the Army, which conducted the tests, and the office of the DOD’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), which independently assessed and verified the results, disagree with the DOD IG’s report.
Pick up any newspaper ([nüz´ pa p r], n. A roughly cylindrical, folded sheaf of paper imprinted with black marks, usually found in a moldering cobwebbed stack behind the hydrangeas), and you will most likely find a story of yet another print media group going through consolidation, layoffs, or just quietly passing on. McClatchy Co., which owns approximately 30 newspapers and just two years ago purchased Knight Ridder, recently announced that it was laying off 1,400 people. Some of this was due to the economy, some to existing debt, and some to both readers and advertisers running off to the internet, a serious issue faced by the entire print industry.
News magazines are also feeling the crunch. U.S. News & World Report recently announced that it is moving from a weekly to a biweekly publication next year, and Time has reduced its circulation base to lower costs. Publishers in general are gasping for breath as readers and ad dollars shift to the internet much more quickly than anyone expected.
I woke up yesterday morning at 6 a.m., downed a glass of juice, showered, got dressed, grabbed my briefcase, and ran out the door. I arrived at the office at 7 a.m. Waiting for me were nearly 50 e-mails; a couple of them were junk, but most were from actual humans to actual, little ol’ me. When did I get so popular? Soon thereafter the phone started ringing--advertisers, subscribers, contributors, vendors, trade partners, etc., etc., etc. By 7:30, I was already way behind.
At noon I ran out for a quick break. I drove through Wendy’s for lunch and ate while scurrying around doing a handful of personal errands. Then it was back to the office for more e-mails, more phone calls, and more meetings; 5 p.m. came around before I knew it. Contact from the outside world slowed down a bit, at which point I finally turned my attention to the editing of this magazine--you know, the quality assurance job that’s my chief responsibility. After three intensive hours of proofing and editing, I returned home, ate dinner, paid some bills, and went to sleep. So far, today’s been pretty much like yesterday--and I expect tomorrow to be the same. Personal time? Family time? Social interaction? What are those things?
I liked the way Craig Cochran discounted or lessened the credibility of the 5 Whys (“Don’t Fail Your Customers With the 5 Whys,” February 2009). He provided excellent rationale for its limitations. His alternatives were good; however, I do not believe they can replace Ishikawa’s use of the fishbone technique. While with IBM, I had a class in defect prevention using the fishbone technique followed by action teams to remedy candidate causes with a resolution to each of the viable candidate causes.
As Dirk Dusharme mentioned recently in this space (“A Bold Step Forward,” June 2008), we at Quality Digest have been working like mad these last few months to launch a major redesign of our web site, conveniently located at www.qualitydigest.com. The primary upgrade involves the addition of streaming video, most of which we script, shoot, and edit ourselves.
Early last month, the new site went live. The results have been even better than expected, and not just in terms of user response. This new project has offered us a fantastic opportunity to learn some valuable lessons about customer service and quality in a whole new medium.
In the article “Leveraging the Brain Trust” (Joe Froelich and Cristopher Del Angel, August 2008), the authors dredge up the infamous Qualpro “study” which asserts that “... 91 percent of the Six Sigma companies exhibited stock performance below the S&P 500.” I addressed this sham claim quite some time ago when it was picked up by FORTUNE Magazine . Qualpro, which sells a service that competes with Six Sigma, refused to respond to my e-mails and never disclosed its data or methodologies. In all likelihood its so-called study is nothing more than a marketing ploy. In the meantime, there is solid academic research that supports the hypothesis that Six Sigma and Total Quality Management pay huge dividends (literally) to shareholders. I wish that Quality Digest’s editorial staff would implement the rule that strong claims demand strong evidence and challenge the Qualpro assertions the next time that they appear in an article.
--Tom Pyzdek
Energy Solutions
Thank you for this excellent, thought- provoking piece on the current energy crisis (“Energy Crisis or Opportunity?” “Quality Curmudgeon,” Scott M. Paton, August 2008).
Thank you, Scott Paton, for telling it like it is (“Stimulated Yet?” Quality Curmudgeon, March 2009). The bonuses at AIG and continuing troubles at General Motors make it pretty clear that bailouts don’t work. It’s also time people start taking responsibility for their actions. The real enemy is greed and until we can control the reward system, bailouts, Sarbanes-Oxley, regulation, or any other government program, we will fail, adding even more expense to the problem.
— Bill Osburn
Paton’s comments recommending that GM and Chrysler go into bankruptcy reflect a standardized, revisionist Calvin Coolidge/Herbert Hoover blather that the “free market” will heal things in due time. Unfortunately, this thinking pervaded the approach of the economists that surrounded Hoover, and the economy plunged into the Depression.
The auto industry actually responded to what many people in the so-called American “free market” wanted: large vehicles, liberal financing, and a demand that was unabated until speculation in the oil markets put a halt to purchasing, along with the complete freeze-up of credit markets.
As this is my last column for Quality Digest, I’m delighted to announce that my distinguished predecessor, Donald J. Wheeler, will be writing this column again. You’ll be in good hands.
When I got my master’s degree in statistics in 1980, jobs were plentiful for internal statistical consultants in corporate research and manufacturing. Their jobs involved educating scientists and engineers in the power of applied statistical methods, especially experimental design. Excellent research in applied methods was performed and collegially disseminated by distinguished groups, most notably DuPont, Kodak, and General Electric. I was part of a strong internal group at 3M. Those groups, for all intents and purposes, have now vanished.
Statistical process control (SPC) became more dominant during the late 1980s. Everything became “bigger, better, faster, more, now!” Suddenly there wasn’t time to do response surface experimental designs, except maybe 22 or 23 factorials and a replication--if you were lucky. See “Using Design of Experiments as a Process Road Map” (www.qualitydigest.com/feb06/articles/02_article.shtml ).
Suppose you had 16 months of data on an important process (as plotted on the run chart seen in figure 1). For improvement purposes, an intervention was made after the sixth observation to lower this key process indicator. This intervention is equivalent to creating a special cause for a desired effect.
There is no trend as defined statistically (despite the trend downward of length five from observations 5 to 9; with 16 data points, one would need length six, or five successive decreases). Neither is there any run of length eight either all above or below the median. So, would you want to conclude that the intervention had no effect? I doubt it!
Think of the median as a reference, and consider each data point as a 50-50 coin flip (heads = above the median; tails = below the median). The question is: Would you expect to flip a coin 16 times and obtain the specific pattern of seven heads (run of length seven above the median), immediately followed by seven tails (run of length seven below the median), then a head (run of length one above the median) and, finally, a tail (run of length one below the median)? Intuition would seem to say, “No.” Is there a statistical way to prove it?
Two vision sensors are used at the station where caps are pressed onto the O-ring loaded on the assembly dial.
