ME-461, Manufacturing

Technology, Lecture 13
Instructor: Shantanu Bhattacharya
GVMM Chair and Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Email: bhattacs@iitk.ac.in
Tel: 05122596056
 Quality Engineering
• Two major determinants of success in any organization are
market demand and profitability.
• The factors influencing and improving the competitive edge
of a company are the its unit cost , product quality and lead
time.
• The best approach of product quality is to build quality into
the product and process right at the product and process
design stage.
• Quality may also be improved at the production stage. (For
this purpose techniques such as statistical process control
are helpful in reducing the no. of non conforming products,
thereby improving the product quality.)
Understanding the Meaning of Quality

• Quality is a relative term. It is really in the eyes of

the beholder.
• From functional point of view, product is
considered to be of good quality if it meets the
desired functional requirements adequately over
the intended period of its use.
• As per the American Society of Quality Control:
Quality is the totality of features and characteristics
of a product or service that bear on its ability to
satisfy a given need.
 The Dimensions of Quality
• Quality is characterized by multiple dimensions as follows:
1. Performance : Primary operating characteristics.
2. Features: Secondary operating characteristics.
3. Time: Time waiting in line, time from concept to production of a new
product, time to complete a service.
4. Reliability: Extent of failure free operation.
5. Durability: Amount of use until replacement is preferred to repair.
6. Uniformity: Low variations among the repeated outcomes of a process.
7. Consistency: Match with documentation, advertising, deadlines, or
industry standards.
8. Serviceability: Resolution of problems and complaints.
9. Aesthetics: Characteristics related to the senses.
10. Personal interface: Characteristics such as punctuality, courtesy and
professionalism.
11. Harmlessness: Characteristics related to safety , health and environment.
12. Perceived quality: Indirect measures or inferences about one or more of
the dimensions, reputation.
 Quality Costs
• One important aspect of the product development process is to translate
the customer requirements into product specifications.
• Manufactured products not meeting the specifications should be repaired.
• Thus the prime quality costs for supplying satisfactory products to
customers include producing, identifying, avoiding or repairing products
that do not meet customer requirements.
• Quality costs have been classified in a number of different categories as
follows:
1. Prevention costs
2. Appraisal costs
3. Internal Failure Costs
4. External Failure Costs
• Prevention costs: Prevention cost include all efforts that go into designing and
manufacturing a product that meets customer requirements by preventing non-
conformance. The various elements of prevention costs include activities involving
quality planning and engineering, new product reviews, product and process design,
process control, training , and quality data acquisition and analysis.
• Appraisal Costs: These include all those costs involved in measuring, evaluating, or
auditing products, components, and purchased materials to ensure conformance with
the standards and specifications. Specifically, appraisal costs include cost of activities
such as inspection and test of incoming material, product inspection and test, materials
and services consumed and maintaining accuracy of test equipment.
• Internal Failure Costs: Internal failure occurs when products fail to meet the customer
quality requirements before being shipped to the customers. Internal failure costs
include all the cost elements involved in rectifying this situation. Examples of internal
failure cost elements are failure analysis, scrap, repair, retest, downtime, yield losses
and downgrading of usual specifications.
• External Failure Costs: External failures occur when the products do not function
satisfactorily after being supplied to the customer. Major costs are incurred for activities
such as complaint adjustment and dealing with returned products. Other costs include
warranty charges and liability costs.
A framework for Quality Improvement
• To be successful in a competitive business environment, it is important to
deliver products that meet customer requirements with respect to quality,
cost and delivery schedule and also keep on improving the product quality.
• Where are the opportunities to improve product quality in any product life
cycle?
• The product life cycle starts with product planning and continues through
such phases as :
1. Product design
2. Production process design
3. Production
4. Maintenance and product service.
• By building in quality right at the design stage the cost of quality control
at the production stage can be considerably reduced.
• Therefore, the preferable approach to improving the product quality is to
build quality into the products at the product design stage, followed by
improvements at the process design stage and them at production
engineering, maintenance and product service stages.
 Designing quality into products and
processes
• Product design is the prime activity in the process of
realizing a product. Therefore it has the greatest
impact on the product quality. Loss of quality occurs
when there is a deviation of functional characteristics
of the products from the target values.
• Taguchi has proposed a philosophy and methodology
for designing quality into products and processes. He
postulates that the process of designing a product or a
process should be viewed as three phases.
• System Design, Parameter Design and Tolerance Design
• System Design:
System design is the process of applying scientific knowledge to produce a basic
functional prototype design. In this phase, new concepts, ideas and methods are
synthesized to provide new or improved products to customers. That means that
the basic design concept is established during this phase including selection of
parts, materials and subassemblies.
For example while designing a car the following questions need to be addressed. Like
should the internal combustion engine block be of cast iron or aluminum alloy?
Should the brakes be antilock brakes? The relationship between the inputs and
outputs are established. Also, the functions of parts and subsystems are
determined during this phase.
• Parameter design:
In the parameter design phase, the levels for the products/ process design parameters
are set to make the system performance less sensitive to causes of variation thus
minimizing quality loss. In parameter design wide tolerances on noise factors are
assumed to allow low manufacturing cost, as it is costly to control noise factors.
During the parameter design phase the quality is improved without controlling or
removing the cause of variation.
Design of experiments, Simulation and optimization are techniques used during the
parameter stage.
• Tolerance Design:
The tolerance design phase usually follows
the parameter design phase. Quality
improvement is achieved by tight
tolerances around the chosen target values
of the control factors so as to reduce
performance variations. However, with
quality improvement- that is, reduction in
quality loss- there may be an increase in
manufacturing cost.
 • What is Quality loss?
The traditional understanding of quality loss is
shown in the figure 1. • The objective in the traditional quality
approach is to ensure that the manufactured
products fall within the specification limits
and are considered to be of good quality.
•Those not meeting the specifications are
considered bad in quality and are either
rejected or reworked.
•So loss is incurred only when the quality
characteristics fall outside the specification
limits.
Taguchi Loss Function •The modern approach to quality considers
that loss is always incurred whenever the
functional quality characteristics of a
product deviates from its target value,
denoted by ‘T’, regardless of how small the
deviation is.
•The increase in value of functional
characteristics from the target value either
way results in increasing the quality loss.
At the LSL and USL the loss equals the cost of manufacturing or disposal of the product.
 Average Quality Loss
• There is always a variation in the quality characteristic due to
noise factors from unit to unit from time to time during the
usage of the product.
• If yi ( i= 1,2,3------) is the ith representative measurement of
quality characteristics y, then the average quality loss can be
computed as follows:
Average Quality Loss
Average Quality Loss
 Common variations of loss functions
• Product characteristics are the barometers of quality
of products in the sense that they describe and
measure the performance of products relative to the
customer requirements and expectations.
• From the customer point of view, the loss is minimum
if quality characteristics is at the target value.
• However, the expectations of the customers would
differ from product to product, and these can be
characterized when these are at the target values.
 Common variations of Loss functions
• Nominal is the best when ‘y’ is at target. Examples
include dimension, viscosity and clearance.

• Smaller is better; that is, y tends to zero, where target

is zero. Examples of quality characteristics include
wear, shrinkage, deterioration, friction loss, and micro-
finish of a machined surface among others.

• Larger is better; y tends to infinity when the target is at

infinity. Examples include fuel efficiency, ultimate
strength, and life.
Applications of Quality Loss Function:

The quality loss function has been used as a decision support tool in a number of situations .

Determine best factory Tolerances: The loss function can be used to determine economical
factory tolerances:
Example:
Consider the production of automatic transmissions for trucks. The transmission shift point is
one of the critical quality characteristics. Truck drivers would feel very uneasy if the
transmission shift point was farther than the tramsmission output speed on the first to
second gear shift by 35 rpm. Suppose it costs the manufacturer $200 to adjust the valve body
to fix the shift point problem. However, it may cost only $16.40 for labor charges to make
adjustments during the manufacturing and testing phase. Determine the factory tolerances.