The Effective Use of Process Capability Databases for Design

Keywords The Effective Use of Process Capability Databases for Design Process capability data
Standards groups

Process capability databases have been developed at most manufacturing companies to enable process monitoring and feedback to design. The academic literature on the design tools of variation simulation analysis, robust design, and tolerance allocation assumes the existence and usability of process capability data. However, it was found that industry is far from this idea. A questionnaire was circulated to numerous industries. It revealed the current and desired uses
for both internal and supplier process capability databases. This survey also showed that, although design should use process capability data to improve their designs, this is not the case. The survey identified several barriers that prevent design from using process capability data. These hindrances are both organizational and technical. The organizational issues include the need for both better communication between functional groups and a company-wide vision of
process capability usage. There are two technical issues. First, there is significant uncertainty in the process capability data. The uncertainty arises from multiple point values, outlier data, surrogate data, and aggregate data. However, this uncertainty is not communicated to the process capability database user. Second, the database interfaces are not design-friendly because the hierarchies are inconsistent, infeasible indexes are listed, and the data is displayed
as an average point value.

Metadata
Date published
1999-06
Document type
technical white paper
Pages
213
Defines standard
Replaced/Superseded by document(s)
Cancelled by
Amended by
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Abstract

Process capability databases have been developed at most manufacturing companies to enable process monitoring and feedback to design. The academic literature on the design tools of
variation simulation analysis, robust design, and tolerance allocation assumes the existence and usability of process capability data. However, it was found that industry is far from this idea. A questionnaire was circulated to numerous industries. It revealed the current and desired uses for both internal and supplier process capability databases. This survey also showed that, although design should use process capability data to improve their designs, this is not the case. The survey identified several barriers that prevent design from using process capability data.

These hindrances are both organizational and technical. The organizational issues include the need for both better communication between functional groups and a company-wide vision of process capability usage. There are two technical issues. First, there is significant uncertainty in the process capability data. The uncertainty arises from multiple point values, outlier data,
surrogate data, and aggregate data. However, this uncertainty is not communicated to the process capability database user. Second, the database interfaces are not design-friendly
because the hierarchies are inconsistent, infeasible indexes are listed, and the data is displayed as an average point value.

Publisher
Author(s)
Melissa M. Tata
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