Transcript Small Company Process Enhancement

INDUSTRIAL STATISTICS
RESEARCH UNIT
We are part of Newcastle University, Department of
Mechanical, Material and Manufacturing Engineering
based in the in the Stephenson Building.
WHAT DO ISRU DO?
Mission Statement:
"To promote the effective and
widespread use of statistical
methods throughout European
industry and to use the ideas and
experience so gained for the benefit
of students and the wider academic
community."
THE WORK ISRU DOES CAN BE
BROKEN DOWN INTO 3 MAIN
CATEGORIES:
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Consultancy
Training
Major Research Projects
All with the common goal of promoting
quality improvement by implementing
statistical techniques
Typical UK or Regional projects
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Assessment of environmental risks in
chemical and process industries
Introduction of statistical process control
(SPC) in micro-electronics company
Help to develop a new catheter for
open-heart surgery via designed
experiments (DoE)
Typical UK Food Projects
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Waffle Manufacturer
Bakery - Biscuits
Bakery - Shortbread
Butter Manufacture
Soft-Drinks Bottling Plant
Crisp Manufacturer
Tea Blender
Cheese Maker
Typical UK Food Projects
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Involved in development of Quorn
One other large company Helped reduce waste on a production
line
The company changed it’s name
Used to be called Rowntrees
Some past successes
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Manufacturing Down-time cut by 40%
Production Waste reduced by 50%
Lead times reduced from 6 to 3 weeks
Stock holding levels halved
Material use optimised saving £150k pa
Expensive equipment shown to be
unnecessary in a new process
Other Benefits
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Better monitoring of processes
Better involvement of people
Staff morale is raised
Waste is reduced
Throughput is increased
Profits go up
Tools of the trade
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Measurement
Logical problem solving
Data analysis
Process capability
SPC, TQM, DoE
Empowered team formation
etc
“Voice of the Customer”
Concept of assessing customer
wishes and giving them what they
want
Links suppliers and customers in
“supply chain”
Becomes easier to make better
products and protects market
EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
‘Taguchi’
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What can it do for companies?
Minimise cost Maximise output
More information than otherwise
Teaching Company Schemes
Key UK Government sponsored
Technology Transfer Mechanism
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Government sponsored up to 70%
for graduate on substantial project
over 2 years working at the Company
with academic supervision from partner
University
We employ the graduate
ISRU have had TCS with
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Amersham International
Boots
Wavin Industrial Products
ICI
*Quality Award
Food for Thought
Villa Soft Drinks
RR Donnelley
Glaxo
*Best Practice Award
European Research
Projects
Fatigue Crack Growth Rate in
Steel Rails
6 Labs mostly major European Steel producers
Two stages - Fractional design - material
constraints
New way of determining ‘stages’ of crack
growth based upon plots of moving average of
MSE through a derived curve
New European Standard
First time that a balanced Factorial array has
been embedded in EC research contract?!
Transient Pressures
Safety of water and sewage systems
Pressure Hammer - Dangerous
6 partners - great interest throughout World
Large rigs in Italy and Holland - The
‘Watterloop’ - filling in the Zieder - Zee
Petrochemical Industry applications
Safety (risks) Model
Experimental Design - Uncertainty in
‘constants’ largely unknown!
Firemen’s Boots
Safety Standards for footwear
Many Partners - mostly in Scandinavia
Questionnaire for Firemen
Several experiments now designed
Eventually - Trial of new standards
Side issue - advice on stats aspects other
standards - Huge scatter - simple ANOVA
can solve - standards need urgent repair
USA standards also have flaws
CIS II
Find the hidden patterns in survey data
75000 responses from round EC
ISRU approach - Screen then Model
Data Mining - The usual suspects - FA / PCA Regression - C-Correlations - GAs
Much interest in Europe about Innovation
WE may be leading the field in this?
Sensory Analysis of Butter
First ever international intercomparison on
sensory analysis in the Dairy industry
9 Labs throughout Europe e.g. Lurpak French Food Safety Agency - 11 partners
4 stages - 4 experimental designs
Sampling Protocol -Fractional Factorial
Used DoE - Compared to ANOVA - this is
best way see - Avery and Masters 1999
Recent Projects
EC 5th Framework - ‘Competitive Growth’ Water Quality - CRM - Public health office Microbes - Industrial Experimental Design
EC- Standards Measurement and testingSensory Analysis for Food Packaging
Materials and Taste taints
EC Standards - Cyclic Oxidisation Testing
Recent Projects
Thematic Network on Industrial Statistics
30 Partners across Europe
To push forward use of statistics in Business
and Industry Pro-Enbis
Thematic Net on Water Surges 20 partners to
investigate the effects of Waterhammer