MEASUREMENT & MONITORING SWITCH TO DIGITAL
SEMPRE GROUP
Making your manufacturing systems cohesive
In 1969 , Margaret Hamilton , director of software engineering for Apollo 11 , was famously pictured standing next to a stack of paper containing the program listing that helped take the first team to the moon . Now , a 4GB phone has over a million times more memory than the Apollo 11 computer had in RAM . Here Russell Pursglove , software product specialist for industrial metrology provider The Sempre Group , explains the benefits of swapping reams of paper for automated quality management .
Keeping track of quality management data manually involves reams of paper , tedious filing and makes it challenging to access information when needed . Paper documents can easily be misplaced or overlooked , which could mean trouble if parts are not to specification or there are problems with quality later on . All in all , a problematic approach .
Yet , when we visit the facilities of British and Irish manufacturers , we often see huge filing cabinets of essential quality management documents like first article inspection reports ( FAIRs ) and product part approval process reports ( PPAPs ). In my experience , only around five per cent of manufacturers use automated quality management software , with the rest opting for paper or detached digital methods .
CRYING OUT FOR CHANGE Though one step up from managing everything on paper , isolated digital documents unnecessarily complicate manufacturers ’ communications with their customers . Without a digital thread connecting drawing to product to report , the process can never be fully traceable . Customers can become confused about product quality , which can create a sense of unprofessionalism and drastically reduce the customer ’ s trust in the supplier .
Manually managing and auditing isolated drawings and models can waste manufacturers thousands of pounds of employee time and lead to human error — a very poor use of a valuable workforce .
Consider this example . A manufacturer is manually creating FAIRs , loading up metrology equipment , taking notes and saving the data in an Excel spreadsheet . Skilled staff are spending hours entering data into an isolated document that isn ’ t communicated properly across the business or supply chain , creating a lack of traceability . At a time when most manufacturers have an enterprise resource planning ( ERP ) platform available to connect digital systems , why would you use isolated documents or paper ?
FINDING A SOLUTION Quality 4.0 makes data king . The journey to achieve Quality 4.0 includes automated data collection to improve reporting , storing and handling of information regarding product quality .
By taking a Quality 4.0 approach — using automated quality management software , plant managers can easily improve efficiency , productivity and quality . For example , using High QA , inspection managers can automatically identify geometric dimensioning and tolerancing ( GD & T ) from models or PDFs , identify critical dimensions and automate results and statistical process control ( SPC ) data to auto-populate reports .
Automated QMS tools offer manufacturers an all-in-one solution for quality management , collecting and storing data at every point , from drawing to final product . They eradicate the need for time consuming paperwork and filing , which means manufacturers can easily communicate important quality information across the supply chain and can remove the headache of compliance reporting . Manufacturers are able to get the best out of their workforce — a real asset during the pandemic where there may be fewer employees on site . The system can check for errors in digital documents , ensuring that they are always filled out right first time .
By implementing a Quality 4.0 approach , using paper to collect data will soon become as outdated as the reams of paper that got Apollo 11 to the moon . For more information about automated quality management software solutions , visit www . thesempregroup . com .
For further information , please visit www . thesempregroup . com
84 PECM Issue 47