Greater efficiency and productivity is the goal of every manufacturer. And although internal systems and protocols are put in place to ensure this goal, quality can still seem elusive.

This was the case for Company A when they undertook an initiative to improve product quality by installing a Vision Inspection System to monitor the parts as they were produced. The new Vision Inspection System (VIS) was designed to support 5 different machines that produced the same part. The VIS was located “off-line”, so the machine operators were required to take the parts out of the production machine to check them using the VIS.

In order to implement the new system, operators were instructed to inspect their parts using the VIS at the start of each production shift. By taking a part from each “spindle” of their respective machines, for a total of five parts, the intention was to detect problems before non-conforming parts were produced. Moreover, if a non-conforming part was discovered, production could not start until issue resolution. If all parts were found to be conforming, production could start (with the additional assurance that all parts being produced were verified by the new VIS).

But once the new system was in place, the quality of parts being produced was not improving and the rate of rejections and scrap remained high…the new Vision Inspection System seemed to be a failure.

To be certain that non-conforming issues actually existed, Company A turned to Bobier Metrology Lab where this fact was verified. When Company A further investigated the problem, they found the root cause to be Machine Operator Error. Due to insufficient understanding of the new inspection instructions, the operators were mixing up the parts when removed from the 5 spindles. This led to correcting spindles that were in specification and not adjusting spindles that were out. The Bobier Team asked Company A to tag and label all samples by spindle. When the corrective action produced more non-conforming parts, these tagged parts were sent to Bobier for inspection and Bobier confirmed which spindles needed adjustment. Once adjustments were made, the VIS agreed with the Independent Inspection results as provided by Bobier.

Production problems were all too familiar to Company A: Stop production, quarantine all parts produced, and sort everything for the non-conforming issues…production output lost, more money lost. But Bobier Metrology Services helped to eliminate this repetitive “loss culture” by providing Certified Dimensional Results to verify non-conforming part production.

With the Vision Inspection System now being used properly, part quality has been greatly improved, and scrap and rejection rates have been substantially reduced. Company A now sends parts to Bobier on a regular basis to monitor the effectiveness of the VIS, as well as to ensure that the operators are inspecting the parts as instructed, leading to greater efficiency and productivity.