Inside Smart Factory

In-process quality assurance

26.07.2019
Ein Mann und eine Frau vor einem Terminal

Intelligent product enhancement enables comprehensive interaction with the machine level

“Quality” is a comprehensive topic that industry has to deal with in all areas of the value chain. Especially in the production-related environment, the requirements of customers, partners and suppliers for comprehensive quality management are becoming increasingly stringent. Whereas in the past one had to rely on a loose coupling to a CAQ system, today one can go new, interactive ways with software-supported quality assurance.

The “in-process quality assurance” represents a new intelligent product extension of the MES solution cronetwork.

“We transfer all test specifications, test equipment and test plans from existing sources into our system and manage them. We use this information to serve almost all other cronetwork modules,” says Thomas Krainz, Member of the Board and responsible for strategic product management at Industrie Informatik, describing the new solution.

 

For him, the added value lies clearly in the fact that we have moved from a reactionary observation of qualitative manufacturing results in retrospect, to a proactive role that allows us to react to possible quality problems already during the production process. In short, manufacturing quality is no longer checked and evaluated afterwards, but is assured during the production process. Using integrated control charts, the recorded results are also statistically evaluated and visually prepared for the user.

 

The complete integration in cronetwork MES enables additional use scenarios, Krainz adds: “Full access to all our product functionalities allows us, among other things, to interact comprehensively with the automation and machine levels. For example, if test specifications at a plant are not complied with, for whatever reason, we can automatically initiate organizational measures and workflows, up to and including automatically stopping of the machine or system. Machine downtimes, high downtime costs, etc. can thus be counteracted at an early stage.”

 

Quality assurance during production with cronetwork: schematic representation

A clear demarcation of tasks is made in the direction of the CAQ system. While the data sovereignty, i.e. inspection plan management, is clearly located here, the service spectrum of cronetwork FQS includes the following core tasks:

  • Monitoring of inspection intervals
  • Recording of inspection values
  • Data display and evaluation
  • Evaluation and calculation of inspection values

Four good reasons für in-process quality assurance

Reduced
Costs

Through targeted information acquisition by means of in-process quality assurance, quality can already be ensured during the production process and not only checked afterwards. High failure costs, machine downtimes, etc. are thus counteracted at an early stage. The user takes on a proactive role in which he can identify weak points at an early stage, determine causes and react to quality problems.

Integration & user-friendliness

The in-process quality assurance is a tool that is fully integrated into cronetwork for recording and monitoring all production-related quality data. The integration into the familiar cronetwork reporting interface ensures optimal user-friendliness for the workers.

The inspection plans are managed in the CAQ system and transferred to cronetwork via a connector.

Comprehensive interaction

The seamless integration with the other MES modules also enables, for example, comprehensive interaction with the automation and machine level as well as the ERP system used. If, for example, a critical quality check is negative, the stock can be booked to a blocked stock in the ERP by means of an automatically generated feedback message or organisational workflows can be initiated, up to and including automatic stopping of the system.

Extensive visualisation

In addition to the comprehensive data collection and its compression, a targeted and context-oriented preparation of the results is crucial. By means of integrated control charts, the recorded results are statistically evaluated and visually prepared for the user. Flexibility and holistic MES information management is offered by the integration into cronetwork Portal, for example, for the display of test events in the tachograph.

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Author
Anita Peherstorfer
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