Product Engineering - Quality Management

Design Detail : Skip Logic

This feature allows you to set patterns for inspections. Instead of measuring every transaction you can skip inspections when quality has proven to be consistent. On the other hand you can increase the number of inspections if rejects occur. ISO 2859-3 states this as: The purpose of these procedures is to provide a way of reducing the inspection effort on products of high quality submitted by a supplier who has a satisfactory quality assurance system and effective quality controls.

Especially from an inspection cost perspective it must be possible to define intervals between these inspections. These intervals must be dynamic which means respond to the actual results of the inspections: when quality is consistent the inspection level should be more relaxed, rejections must lead to a more intensified inspection. With Skip Logic you can define these dynamics in business rules:

  • The value of an item, expensive items must be inspected more frequently than cheap items. On the one hand because expensive items can more easily bear the cost of inspection and on the other hand the loss for a defective, expensive, item is higher.
  • The activity of an item, items with a large number of transactions can be inspected less compared to items with only a few transactions as a company will have less experience with these items.
  • Vendor or process confidence, when a vendor or a process has proven to be reliable (based on the number of defects / rejects found) the inspection frequency can be lowered. The reverse is also true a higher defect rate should lead to a higher inspection frequency.
  • Time interval, when the time between intervals becomes too long it should override the inspection frequency.

In spite of the above you should also consider the ISO 2859-3 Requirements for supplier qualification:

  1. The supplier shall have implemented and maintained a documented system for controlling product quality and design changes. It is assumed that the system includes inspection by the supplier of each lot produced and the recording of inspection results.
  2. The supplier shall have instituted a system that is capable of detecting and correcting shifts in quality levels and monitoring process changes that may adversely affect quality. The supplier's personnel responsible for the application of the system shall demonstrate a clear understanding of the applicable standards, systems and procedures to be followed.
  3. The supplier shall not have experienced any change that might adversely affect quality.

With these requirements in mind skip patterns should only be applied to non-critical items due to the risk of ignoring (skipping) a potentially dangerous lot.

Skip Logic adds the following functions:

  1. Item Classification: You can import Items and/or SKU's that you want to classify in a worksheet. You can also set the classes: what % of the selected number of items must be class A, what % class B and what % class C. This classification can be on Activity, the number of item ledger entries in a specified period and for a specified type of entry. And on turnover also for a specified period and area.
  2. Skip Patterns: You can set a pattern for each combination of Activity and turnover based on Frequency and Interval

See also

Tasks

Reference

Quality Management