Interprise Solution is a company with extensive knowledge and major experience in implementing quality management instruments. We provide consultations and trainings that will allow you to acquire the knowledge necessary for a skilful use of methods and tools to support your quality management, and consequently implement them in your organization.
Support in quality management, your advantage over the competition
Due to a rapidly developing technology, the quality of the product or service offered is a key factor determining who will achieve a competitive advantage on the market.
Quality is the basic criterion that will decide about the success of the company. This applies to any production company, regardless of its size, type of carried out production or services provided.
Quality is an element which should be improved in every aspect of the organization’s operation.
Next to the quality of the product, service or functioning of processes in the company, an equally important factor is the work of people creating the entire organization.
The quality of human work increases as a result of constant improvement of your employees’ competences and providing them with the appropriate theoretical and practical background.
Competition, globalization, digitization, growing customer requirements and price pressure forgive no mistakes. Research shows that the costs of poor quality increase 10 times at each subsequent stage of the product life, while removal of failures may cost the company up to 30% of the overall turnover.
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Solutions we provide are the result of many years of experience on the market and access to the tools we have developed for managing quality and production process.
APQP (Advanced Product Quality Planning)
APQP method proves useful when planning and implementing new projects whose primary purpose is to deliver compatible products. It includes 5 phases:
- Planning and defining the program
This phase aims to determine the connection between customer needs and expectations and planning and defining a quality program. This initial step ensures that the client’s requirements and needs are fully understood.
- Designing and developing the product
This phase focuses on performing a thorough and critical analysis of technical and engineering requirements. During the FMEA analysis, the product is evaluated in terms of its production feasibility, potential problems, risks, malfunctions and their consequences that may occur in the production process. A positive evaluation of the feasibility of the production of a given product means it is possible to simultaneously meet all of the following:
- accepted production volumes and plans for their implementation,
- technical requirements for the product,
- requirements concerning quality and product reliability,
- planned investment costs,
- set product development plan.
- Project design and development
This phase aims at diagnosing the main characteristics of the production system, i.e.:
- defining necessary technological steps,
- process flow,
- layout of the machines, production and measurement equipment (MSA analysis) and associated control plans, all of which ensures reaching intended quality of the products.
The step of designing and developing production process should result in obtaining an efficient production system which meets all requirements, needs and expectations of the client.
- Validation of the product and process
This phase discusses the way of validating the production process by evaluating a trial batch. During the production of the trial batch, the APQP team is tasked with assessing if the control plan and process flow are respected and whether manufactured product meets client’s requirements. In addition, the team should check for any additional factors in the series production that require taking action to ensure optimal quality of the product. For this purpose, statistical process control (SPC), addressing these questions is carried out.
- Feedback analysis and corrective actions
In this phase, the information obtained during the development of the project is analyzed. The main purpose of this step is to avoid repeating previously made mistakes by using the experience gained during execution of previous projects.
Process Flow Diagram
After conducting a feasibility study and starting the production, a process flow diagram (PFD) is developed. It is one of the fundamental tools used in quality management, as it allows decision makers to better understand the essentials of the process.
The diagram is a graphical representation of the sequence of activities undertaken in a given process, flow of materials and information, etc. The very stage of preparing the diagram is crucial as it reveals numerous dependencies in the process that normally are not strongly exposed.
FMEA
FMEA, (FMECA) – Failure Mode and Effect (Critical) Analysis – was developed in the USA in the 1950s. It is a method of analyzing the causes of the defects in e.g. product, construction or production process and resulting consequences.
Main actions taken in this method focus on predicting the possibility and probability of arising inconsistencies, planning methods of their detection and taking actions that limit the risk of their occurrence.
FMEA is implemented through a mathematical model of risk assessment, based on defined ratios determining the scale of the negative impact of a defect, probability of its occurrence and difficulty of its detection. FMEA allows to conduct a series of analyses over the product and, consequently, implement advisable changes (i.e. all kinds of corrections, new solutions) that eliminate the source of the defect. Analyses can be carried out for whole products, individual components or construction elements of a given product, as well as for the entire technological process or any of its operations.
The FMEA is a basic step to develop a control plan. In the automotive industry it is the most fundamental document used in control planning related to the product and process. It ensures clients’ satisfaction in terms of quality expectations and protects the company from undesired complaints.
Control plan
The main elements of the control plan are:
- operation / process subject to inspection
- controlled specification of the product or process
- acceptance criteria
- test plan: sample size and frequency of inspections
- measurement instrument used for inspection
- reference to a detailed control instruction (if needed)
- controlling person (unless it is an automatic control)
- reaction plan, i.e. actions to be taken in case of failing to meet the acceptance criteria.
Measurement Systems Analysis (MSA)
Proper control requires use of appropriate tools and control methods. One of such methods is MSA – measurement systems analysis. MSA includes a number of tools to verify and improve your measurement systems. It aims to provide correct and true data needed for qualitative and quantitative analyses. This proves crucial since the quality of the measurement system directly affects the quality of the research results and analyses obtained, and thus the end product itself.
Statistical Process Control (SPC)
The control carried out only after the completion of the process is ineffective, therefore we suggest that it is carried out during the production. SPC is an optimal solution in this field. It is based on the permanent control of the process using control cards that give an objective assessment of whether a given process is going on as planned or if it begins to show signs of “non-standard” behavior which requires immediate reaction.
During the monitoring, further key measurements obtained during the control are added to the control card and in case of any considerable variations in values, when trends are revealed or average value is observed, the person in charge of the control is able to correct the process before incompliant elements are produced. The use of control charts usually leads to a significant reduction in the amount of waste and thus improvement in the quality and efficiency of the process. At the same time, the control cards serve as introduction to the analysis of the process. On its basis, the process capability indices are calculated (Cp, Cpk, Pp, Ppk) which enable to define control limits and to analyze dependencies between variables.
Production Part Approval Process (PPAP)
The culmination of the Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) is the process of approving parts for the production, the so-called PPAP. This process checks the compliance of components with customer requirements. PPAP is performed on the basis of 18 strictly defined documents. It is both a proof and declaration of feasibility of producing customer-defined products.