½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are? 2

[dmytry]

Hi All,

My name is Dmytry Mykhaylov and I’m a software engineer. The thing is... I sort of «inherited» one project and I need to make a qualified decision about whether to shut it down or continue up to some final product. The objective of the project is to create an on-line service for «Process Plan» or the «Shop-Floor Work Instruction» generation. It may be considered as a light-weight web-based CAPP system for small workshops or, if my understanding of MES is correct, it may be considered as a part of MES.

Unfortunately, I’m absolutely unfamiliar with the problem area of the project. I mean... I do know how to do this project as a software developer, but I have no idea what it is all about! This is the first time in my practice when I have an absolute zero of knowledge, but have to use only my common sense. This is why I started to surf the Internet and eventually founded this wonderful forum.

Why does my common sense keep me searching? One moment about the core algorithm of this application tells me that it might be a really helpful and useful for somebody else:

• The algorithm doesn’t depend on any specific equipment, tools, instruments, fixtures, coolant, etc. etc. – anything what might be needed to «perform» the proper work. Technically, if stone axe will be put in the «knowledge base» of the system – it will be treated as a regular «tool» and used appropriately when needed.
• First implication: user never refers to any «shop-specific» data when describes the future process (may be only except information regarding material, which may be in the shop-specific format or classification).
• Second implication: the same «process description» may be run against different sets of equipment (or «knowledge bases» of different shops) and every time the «shop-specific» process plan or work, instruction will be generated.

Limitations:

• It has nothing in common with ISO 10303, STEP/STEP NC etc. It doesn’t require shop to have any specific equipment on the floor. It can work with _any_ equipment/tools/fixtures.
• It doesn’t generate CNC-code. It is not the goal. The goal is to provide _detailed_, readable «work instruction» for shop-floor personal and generate the proper data about equipment/tools/fixtures usage on every step of this process (after that these data may be transferred to the appropriate MES or MES+ERP systems for further analysis).

The purpose of this post is to ask one question about how useful such kind of service might be for today’s manufacturing. Is it important to have a formal description of the process on the shop floor?

As an illustration to my question, here is the meaning of some columns in this document:

For example, the record "R" of the document contains the following info:

• "PI" - # of the position
• "D or ?"- design size of the diameter or width
• "L"- design size of the working stroke
• "t"- cutting depth
• "i"- number of cuts
• "S"- feeding
• "n"- spindle’s speed
• "V"- cutting speed
• "? aux"- auxiliary time (min)
• "? main"- main time (min)

The terminology and grammar of the document might be slightly inaccurate, but I hope it demonstrates the general purpose of the service.

I’ll be thankful for any advice, comment or information of any kind,

-dm

 

[looslib]

In the early 80's a few companies that used geberative CAPP were: Westinghouse Defense in Baltimore, now Northrup-Grumman; Cincinnati-Milacron; Texas Instruments; Hughes Electronics.

I have been out of the CAPP side of manufacturing for 20 years, but I was on the Westinghouse develoment team.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli
Sr IS Technologist
L-3 Communications

 

[mrainey]

"Could you provide an example?"


One simple example might be:

Part A has two operations on a CNC machining center.

Part B is identical to part A except that it has an additional hole. This hole is deep and of small diameter (we'll say .125), and must be put in at an angle of forty-five degrees. Because of the fixturing currently used, this can't be done on the CNC machining center.

The angled hole will intersect two holes that are presently being put in on the machining center. One of these intersected holes is currently machined in operation 1, the other in operation 2.

Drilling through these holes at an angle might cause problems with tool breakage or wandering. Most CNC machines have no "feel" for when chips are packing up in the flutes or the tool isn't cutting well. Operators vary widely in their abilities.

When do you machine the extra hole and the intersected holes? Do you add one or more operations? Do you redesign the whole process around that one hole? Build a new fixture? Buy special tooling? Farm it out? Talk the engineer into modifying the design?

How much will Part B cost to manufacture?

Obviously, smart people can usually come up with good (if not always optimal) solutions. How well can a computer do?



Manufacturing Freeware and Shareware

http://mrainey.freeservers.com

 

[nate2003]

"ISO cares not if you make good or bad product, as long as you do it consistently by the procedures."

"ISO simply means this:
"You document what you do, and you do what you document.""

I realize this is an old thread, but I just noticed it and had to add my two cents worth. ISO has changed in the last several years. While it is true (from what I have been told) that the above mentioned comments were basically true under the old standard, the new standard is dramatically different from the old one.

ISO9001:2000 is very much oriented toward customer requirements. It requires you to actually find out what the customer needs and expects and plan your processes around the customer and verify that you met his needs for quality, delivery, and that he is satisfied. Just because it passed your final inspection and shipped on-time or just because he didn't complain doesn't mean he is satisfied. The product could be better or worse that he expected. Everything from initial point of contact with the customer the to preparation of the quote through delivery and post delivery needs to be customer focused. There needs to be a review of capability before accepting contracts. Production control needs to verify that the lead times are accurate. Quality needs to make sure that they are capable of inspecting to CUSTOMER requirements. Someone needs to follow up with the customer to make sure that their requirements were met. There needs to be a formal process in place for documenting CUSTOMER changes to orders. Customer satisfaction needs to be measured and improved. I am just try to clarify something as it was explained to me. You can have the best process in the world, and make the best product in the world, but if you didn't give the customer exactly what he wanted or needed, you fail. It sounds crazy, but ISO actually requires you to find out more about the application than the customer may even know himself. For example if he orders the wrong tool for the job, you should actually have helped him decide from the beginning what he actually needed so that he could order the right one. In other words, you could give the customer exactly what he ordered, but if he ordered the wrong thing, his need was not met and you don't understand your customers or their applications, so you fail. OK, enough about that.

However, just because a company is ISO certified, that doesn't guarantee anything. I know from experience that these documents are more or less for sale and auditors will freely issue them for the hefty checks that companies give them, regardless of whether you deserve them or not.

 

[dmytry]

Thank you, nate2003

It is very interesting information, regarding ISO9001:2000, but how it affect the process plan you need on the shop-floor? How operator on the floor might be affected by these requirements? What an engineer should add/remove from the previous version of the plan for the same job for the same customer?
Could you summarize?

 

[nate2003]

Dmytry,
As long as the process was designed around meeting customer requirements and your process is good, nothing may need to change.

Basically, an audit should be done in each area to the appropriate areas of the ISO standard. There are many areas such as review of customer requirements, planning of product realization, monitoring and measurement of processes, customer satisfaction, infrastructure requirements, control of records, control of documents, etc. Customer requirements should be reflected in engineering drawings and processes should reflect this as well. All too often products take too long to make and cost too much because operators are reaming holes to hold a thousandth of an inch on a hole because that is what the print requires because the engineer wants a "quality" product, when in reality, the customer just wants a hole to hang his shovel from a nail, so a cast hole plus or minus an eighth inch is plenty adequate.

In other words, design engineering needs to design around the customer, not design and sell the best darn gold plated pen that writes in three colers with a built in level and wireless internet when the customer only wants a carpenter's pencil.

The new standard doesn't necessarily obsolete old processes, it does however shift the focus from "do what you say and say what you do" to "know your customer and show me that you are meeting his requirements".

 

[dmytry]

Nate2003,

so... if I'm following you - the design engineers will be more affected by the latest shift in ISO requirements (because they are actually trying to express what customer wants in their drawings), but not the manufacturing engineers (who just trying "to make it happens") is it correct assumption?

thanks

 

[nate2003]

To some extent, but again, customer requirements cascade throughout the organization through purchasing, quality, sales, assembly, subcontracting and everywhere else. As someone whose responsibility is to cut cost (not quality) I am constantly challenging design engineering with ways to reduce manufacturing cost. For example, can we make this from a casting? Can we use a purchased bolt instead of manufacturing our own? Why are we manufacturing a washer? Sometimes the answer I get back is "Well, what do you think?" I say that I don't know what the application is and that is what determins the design. They say that they don't know what the application is either. ISO says, get on the phone with the customer and find out the application. We can change the design to make it simpler and cheaper. The customers are happy because they get what they need faster and cheaper. We are happy because we split the savings with them and now have extra capacity because of the faster manufacturing so that we don't have to outsource so much and our delivery is improved along with inventory turns and all because we started caring about the customers requirements instead of forcing a quality product down their throat that was overkill for their application. Win-win for everyone.

That is big difference from the old ISO philosophy of making all junk with no variation between it.

 

[dmytry]

Thank you for your contribution

 

[Ashereng]

nate2003,

That is an interesting concept, give the customer what he needs, even if he doesn't know what it is that he needs.

So, how do I become an expert at what my customer does? Or, how does my supplier become more expert in my business than me? There are things such as trade secrets, copyrights, and other intellectual property laws that would pretty much make it close to illegal, if not impossible, to do what ISO is requiring.

Any proprietary trade secret would make a supplier unable to meet the criteria set out in ISO.

I think ISO is useful. I think what ISO thinks of itself is far more grander than what I think.

Like you mentioned, since an ISO certification is not a guarantee, it means that being certified is not related to whether I get a good product, service, experience with an ISO supplier.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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[nate2003]

Ashereng,
I have mixed feelings about ISO in general. My company went through certification about 4 years ago. I was chosen right away to be an internal auditor to do baseline audits and then have been doing surveilance audits ever since. We started out with the new standard so I have no experience with the old one although it was described to me during my indoctrination classes. Personally ISO has been very frustrating for me. We had a pretty good system in place at my facility for audits, for procedures and document control. However we are only the manufacturing plant. The design and sales side of our business has been very poor at their implementation of ISO. Then the powers that be in our organization decided that the ISO control would take place in a different country. Now we have no control of what we audit and where. We audit areas of the company to clauses in the standard that do not apply to those areas. We have two different company-wide accessible servers for "controlled" documents. I have found eight different "controlled" Quality Policy Statements. Engineering still releases drawings without going through the approval process, so the first time we run a job we need to do an engineering change to the print to make the parts fit together. Sales still takes orders from customers for tools that we haven't made in 40 years and still gives them a 4 week lead time even though we need to have castings made and don't have patterns. I have been trying to finish up an audit for a month because I did all 10 corrective action requests on the wrong form although I got it from our "Controlled" server. The ISO person told me I should have remembered the email that she sent out 5 months ago with the new procedure for routing CARS. Silly me, I was just following the controlled procedure from the document managment system.

Intellectually, I believe that if properly implemented and administrated, ISO can be good and do good things for a company. However, in my experience it has become a headache and a pain in my side. We have our certification, but things are not better that I can tell. It takes a lot of time and causes me much frustration. Whether or not a company is ISO certified has little weight when I am looking at a supplier. My thought is, "Yeah, so are we and I know what a mess we have".

Since I am salary, part of my responsibility is to be an "attitude thermostat" in the organization, so I have to support and defend my company policies on the shop floor, but personally ISO has been a pain for us.

I can defend the idea to some extent, but in reality I have not personally seen a company where it was actually effective although I am sure that there are companies where it is.

Anyway, enough of my ranting. The intent of my original post was just to clarify a possible misperception and I think that has been done. Thanks for the discussion.

Only six hours until the weekend starts.

 

[Ashereng]

nate2003,

I was with a company that was one of the early adopter of ISO. It was a very long process, over 1 year's worth of effort by everyone.

ISO, as a process is a good idea. ISO, the way it is represented, as a "quality" company if you are certified, is mis-leading. As you have noted, through experience, ISO can not guarantee anything. An ISO certified company does not equal a "quality" company, with good serice/products etc.

The fact that ISO's changed their requirement to require you to give your client what they "really need", instead of what they "ordered" troubles me. This type of attitude is vey elitest and condescending - I know what you need, you don't. Sounds like consultants.

Wait a minute! ISO is really a consultant aren't they?

They come in, tell you what you need, charge you a huge fee, and then go away and comes back to audit later (for another huge fee). But, they don't tell you what you need, now, do they?

It seems to me that ISO isn't giving me what I need. They are not following their own preaching! Then again, most consultants don't - they tell you what should be done, but don't know what/how to do to get you there.



Off soap box. Enought ranting. Weekend is starting!



"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[Qualityguy]

A quick comment on ISO certification. If the intent is to be registered for the sake of registration, it's an incredible waste of time, effort and money. ISO 9000:2000 is a BASIC business model, with global recognition. It provdes business with basic tools to provide a structure and frame work for a quality MANAGEMENT system.

 

[brookside]

I have been implementing ISO 9001: 2000, 14000, and 17025 for many years. I have been a business management consultant for 32 years (including 10 years consulting for the BDC) and now I am the General Manager for my current employer. ISO is now and always was a management diven initiative; without their buy-in it will die on the vine. ISO 2000 has 1.2 Application for Reduction in Scope. You should create your vision of who you are as a company and base it on the Lean Principles that fit your process. If you work your procedures (5) and work instructions (where their absence would adversely effect quality)in a consistent measurable fashion you will stand out as a dependable company. Forget the ones who do not get this simple point and concentrate on your own mission and target goal setting.

 

[dmytry]

Thank you, brookside