Patent Application
20080269936
This invention relates to a method of selecting a product to be inspected and a program for selecting a product to be inspected by the product sampling inspection conducted in the product production process.
In a product such as a chemical product or plastic product produced through the process of mixing a plurality of materials, the characteristic values of the product functions and the content of the chemical substances in the product may be varied depending on the production conditions including the processing temperature and the processing time. Therefore, the quality of the product to be shipped is required to be secured by conducting the product inspection in the production process. The method of the product inspection includes a total inspection and a sampling inspection. The total inspection is the one conducted on all the products produced (in all units of product lots, for example). In the sampling inspection, on the other hand, samples are picked out at predetermined intervals from the products flowing on the production line and inspected, and the result is used to represent the result of product inspection for the particular intervals.
The total inspection, though recommended for securing the product quality, poses the problem that the inspection steps and the inspection cost are increased. For the products and materials of a quality stabilized to a certain degree, therefore, the sampling inspection is conducted.
The conventional sampling inspection, as described in JP-A-9-269294, is conducted for each predetermined number of products or product lots at an optimum frequency set according to the balance between the product quality to be secured and the inspection cost. The (product) lot is defined as a group of products processed at the same time in each production process. According to this technique, the amount of the loss incurred as the result of overlooking a defect for a predetermined inspection frequency is estimated using the relation between the rate at which a product defect is detected by an inspection device and the frequency at which a product defect occurs, and the inspection frequency is optimized in such a manner as to minimize the sum of the loss amount and the inspection cost required for the inspection conducted at the particular frequency.
The result of this product inspection is utilized to investigate the cause of the defect as well as to secure the product quality as described below. A product defect is considered to be caused either by the material used for product (hereinafter referred to as “the material-derived defect”) or by the production equipment or the production conditions (hereinafter referred to as “the production-derived defect).
A material-derived defect is investigated by measuring the amount of the chemical substances, for example, contained in a sample of a material lot used in the defective product. In an anomalous case where the investigation result indicates that the amount of a chemical substance is larger than a specified value, the particular material lot is determined as the cause of the defect, and the shipment of the other products produced from the particular material lot is suspended or the products are recalled. A production-derived defect, on the other hand, is investigated by checking whether the production history of the equipment, etc. used in the production of the defective product is anomalous or not. The “production history” is defined as the chronologically recorded information including the materials used for production in a given equipment, the lots of a product in process and the production conditions such as the processing temperature and the processing time.
The investigation of a material-derived defect is a time-consuming job requiring the preparation of an analysis sample and the waiting time before reaction. In view of this, a material lot used for a product lot is not investigated as long as the particular product is found not defective by the sampling inspection conducted during the production, on the assumption that the possibility is low that the particular material lot causes the defect even in the case where the particular product is found defective after shipment.
The conventional sampling inspection method used for this investigation of the cause of the defect poses the problem described below.
In the case where a product is found defective after being shipped, it is important to specify the cause of the defect quickly. A product lot having a smaller number of material lots requiring the investigation (hereinafter sometimes referred to as the investigation-required material lots) at the time of defect occurrence requires a correspondingly smaller number of steps to trace the cause of the defect, and therefore, the cause of such a defect can be specified at an early time. In the sampling inspection of a product in the production process, therefore, it is important to select a product lot requiring the inspection (hereinafter sometimes referred to as the inspection-required product lot) in such a manner as to minimize the material lots to be investigated at the time of defect occurrence.
The conventional inspection method in which product lots are sampled at predetermined intervals, however, fails to take the material lots used for the product into consideration, and therefore, poses the problem that a multiplicity of material lots may be required to be investigated at the time of defect occurrence.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a method of selecting a product to be inspected and a system for selecting a product to be inspected, which reduce the number of investigation steps to be followed at the time of defect occurrence without increasing the inspection frequency.
According to this invention, there is provided a method of selecting an inspection-required product lot in the production process of the product, in which the combination of the inspection-required products is optimized thereby to reduce the number of steps executed for investigating the cause of a defect occurred. First, an inspection-required product lot is assumed from the information on the allotment of material lots to the product lots scheduled for production for a given future period and the number of the product lots inspected for the particular period. Next, based on the material lots to be used for the inspection-required product and the allotment information described above, the number of the investigation-required material lots at the time of defect occurrence is totalized for each product lot, and thus, the statistical values (maximum value and average value) of the totalized value are calculated. These statistical values are calculated for all the conceivable combinations of the product lots, and a combination of the product lots optimizing the statistical values is extracted for inspection. By selecting an inspection-required product lot from the information on the allotment of material lots to a product lot scheduled for production in the above-mentioned way, the expectation value and the maximum value of the number of the material lots to be investigated at the time of defect occurrence can be controlled, and therefore, the number of investigation steps at the time of defect occurrence can be reduced while maintaining the same inspection frequency as the conventional sampling inspection.
According to this invention, an inspection-required product lot is selected in such a manner as to optimize the expectation value and the maximum value of the number of investigation-required material lots at the time of defect occurrence, and therefore, the number of investigation steps to be followed at the time of defect occurrence can be reduced while at the same time maintaining the same inspection frequency as in the conventional sampling inspection.
Other objects, features and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the following description of the embodiments of the invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
Embodiments of the invention are explained in detail below.
An inspection-required product selection system 10 shown in
Although the received order information 11, the design information 12 and the stock information 13 are input from external sources through a network in the system configuration shown in
The received order information 11 is the information on products ordered and customers that have ordered the products, and as shown in
The design information 12 is the information on the materials used for producing a given product, and as shown in
The stock information 13 is the information on the material lots held in stock, and as shown in
The production plan information 14 is the result of allotting the material lots to the product lots scheduled to be produced for a predetermined future period, and prepared based on the received order information 11, the design information 12 and the stock information 13.
The parameter input unit 15 is configured of an input unit such as a keyboard or a mouse and a display unit, and used by the user to input an inspectable product lot number 16 and optimization conditions 17 to the inspection-required product selection system 10. The inspectable product lot number 16 is the number of the product lots that can be inspected during the period estimated at the time of preparing the production plan information 14, and determined by the user based on the time and cost consumed per inspection session and the budget available for the inspection during the particular period. The optimization conditions 17 are the information used to determine the optimum inspection-required product lot 19 and configured of the parameters and the criterion for the optimum value of the number of the material lots to be investigated at the time of defect occurrence. For example, the statistical amount (maximum value or average value) of the number of the investigation-required material lots is set as a parameter and the maximum value (minimum value) of the statistical amount as a criterion. The inspection-required product lot 19 is a data base for accumulating the output result of the present system, i.e. the information on the product lots to be inspected for a given period of time.
The process in the inspection-required product selection system 10 is configured of the function 25 for assuming an inspection-required product, the function 26 for extracting the materials requiring no investigation, the function 27 for totalizing the number of the investigation-required materials, the function 28 for calculating the statistical values and the function 29 for determining an inspection-required product. The inspection-required product selection system 10 thus outputs the inspection-required product lot 19 in response to the production plan information 14 and the inspectable product lot number 16 input thereto. Also, the inspection-required product selection system 10 can change the method of determining the inspection-required product lot 19 according to the optimization conditions 17. Each function of the inspection-required product selection system 10 is described in detail later.
In
On the production line 21 in
The inspection unit 22 inspects the product lot sampled out from the production line 21 in the aforementioned way.
The inspection result input unit 23 is configured of an input unit such as a keyboard or a mouse and a display unit, and operates in such a manner that the result 24 of the inspection conducted on each product lot by the inspection unit 22 is input to the inspection-required product selection system 10. In an alternative embodiment, the inspection result input unit 23 and the parameter input unit 15 may be one unit.
The inspection result 24 is the result of inspection made on each product lot input through the inspection result input unit 23, and as shown in
Next, an explanation is given about a method of preparing the production plan information 14 used for the arithmetic operation in the inspection-required product selection system 10 shown in
The production plan information 14 is prepared from the received order information 11, the design information 12 and the stock information 13. The method of preparing the production plan information 14 is explained in detail below with reference to the flowchart of
First, the amount of a product to be produced for a certain future period of time is determined based on the received order information (S9). In accordance with the orders received from X, Y and Z companies shown in
The correspondence between the product lots and the material lots shown in
Next, with reference to the flowchart of FIG. 1, the operation of each function in the inspection-required product selection system 10 shown in
The inspection-required product selection system 10 reads the production plan information 14 prepared by the aforementioned procedure and displays the production-planned product information in the production plan information on the parameter input unit 15 (S1). The production-planned product information is defined as the number of product lots scheduled to be produced for a predetermined future period. In the case where the production plan information 14 of the product A shown in
Next, the user inputs the inspectable product lot number 16 and the optimization conditions 17 from the parameter input unit 15. The inspectable product lot number 16 is determined and input by the user based on the production period and the number of the product lots displayed on the parameter input unit 15 and the time and cost required for the product inspection. Also, the parameters and the criterion for determining the inspection-required product lot are input as the optimization conditions 17 (S2). A plurality of parameters and criteria including the primary optimization item and the secondary optimization item can be set. In accordance with the display screen of
Upon complete input of the aforementioned items by the user, the inspection-required product assumption function 25 assumes, from the product lots to be produced as described in the production plan information 14, combinations of the product lots to be produced in the inspectable product lot number 16 (S3). In
Then, the function 26 of extracting the materials requiring no investigation (hereinafter referred to as the investigation-unrequired material extraction function 26) extracts the material lots to be used for the inspection-required product lots assumed above (S4). The material lots thus extracted are assumed to have a small chance of being defective as long as the corresponding product function is determined satisfactory by the product sampling inspection and, if used for other product lots, assumed to require no investigation at the time of defect occurrence. By determining the correlation between the number of the inspection-required product lots and the number of the investigation-unrequired material lots, therefore, the inspection-required product lots optimizing the number of the investigation steps at the time of defect occurrence are determined by the processing steps described below.
Assuming the inspection-required product lots as shown in case 1 of
Next, the investigation-required material number totalization function 27 totalizes, for each product lot scheduled to be produced, the number of the material lots (hereinafter referred to as the “investigation-required material lots”) not designated as the investigation-unrequired material lots by the investigation-unrequired material extraction function 26 (S5).
In the case where the inspection-required product lots are assumed as in case 1 of
Further, the statistical value calculation function 28 calculates the statistical values (maximum value and average value) of the totalized number of the investigation-required material lots for each product lot scheduled for production (S6). In
The aforementioned calculation of the statistical values is made for all conceivable combinations of the product lots. Specifically, in the case of
After calculation of the number of the investigation-required material lots as described above, the inspection-required product determining function 29 determines the inspection-required product lots 19 based on the optimization conditions 17, and stores the determination result in the inspection-required product lot storage unit 19. Also, the same result is output to the output means 20 at the production site through the selection result output unit 33 (S8).
In
According to the example shown in
By minimizing the maximum value of the number of the investigation-required material lots, the risk of expanding the number of investigation steps upon defect occurrence can be avoided. Also, in the case where the average value of the number of the investigation-required material lots is minimized, the expectation value of the number of investigation steps can be minimized.
As described above, various advantages are obtained by the optimization parameters and the criteria. These values, therefore, should be selected freely by the user for a particular purpose.
The result determined as described above is output to the output means 20 installed on the production line and thus transmitted to the workers on the production line.
Although the example described in
By selecting the inspection-required product lots according to the method described above, the investigation can be concentrated on the material lots having a high possibility as a cause of a product defect which may occur, and therefore, the cause of the defect can be traced at an early time.
It should be further understood by those skilled in the art that although the foregoing description has been made on embodiments of the invention, the invention is not limited thereto and various changes and modifications may be made without departing from the spirit of the invention and the scope of the appended claims.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007-117957 | Apr 2007 | JP | national |
