Your Trust, Our Responsibility – Nano Seimitsu’s new common sense of quality assurance (PART 1)
23 Jan 2023
The basis of manufacturing in the Japanese-affiliated manufacturing industry is self-process completion (quality is built-in within the process), but the required acceptance criteria have become stricter year by year, and the time has come when even one defect in a million pieces is not tolerated.
Manufacturers have a limited budget for sorting and quality assurance.
Meanwhile, Nano Seimitsu, which aims to be the "Force Behind-the-Scenes" in quality assurance for Thai manufacturing companies, has completed a system that prevents defective products from being produced in the manufacturing process, based on versatile standard machines.
Let us introduce you to the "New Common Sense of Quality Assurance" proposed by Nano Seimitsu!
Challenge to ZERO DEFECTS※１. Nano Seimitsu's "Quality Assurance" consists of three major parts (see figure above).
How can we achieve "0 (ZERO) PPM with No Defective Product in One Million Pieces" within a limited budget?
In addition to the function of a sorting machine sales trading company, Nano Seimitsu's solution, found from the perspective of a mass-production manufacturer that operates a polishing shaft manufacturer called Fortune Cross, lies in quality management along these three time-axes.
※ 1) ZD Activity: an in-house activity in a company with the goal of reducing shortcomings and defects to zero.
Nobuhiro Oishi / Managing Director
Hiroyuki Hara / Chairman
Kazuaki Yada / Marketing & Purchasing Director
Hiroo Fukusho / Managing Director, FNS SOLUTIONS CO., LTD
Kanin Hongsunirundon / Marketing & Purchasing Manager
(From the left in the front row → From the left in the back row)
LINE QC SPECIALIST, a quality management system that pursues "ZERO PPM" to eliminate defective products in the manufacturing process
In-process quality control
LINE QC SPECIALIST monitors each part in the production process and issues a warning if an out-of-specification value appears. A quality management system that does not allow defective products to be made.
The key to quality management in the manufacturing process is LINE QC SPECIALIST（LQS） developed by Nano Seimitsu.
Thorough in-process inspections and automated pre-shipment sorting which is Nano Seimitsu's specialty, will improve the accuracy of defective products detection, but will not reduce the number of defective products themselves.
In order to fundamentally reduce defective products, it is necessary to take measures against the source of defective products occurrence in the manufacturing process. To stop the outflow of defective products at 1 in a million (zero PPM) without automatic sorting of all products, we should "Eliminate In-process Defects.
LQS is a system in which software monitors and controls employee work procedures and equipment (machines) / measuring instruments to ensure that products are always manufactured within specifications (within mass production standards) and safely, in accordance with internal manufacturing rules.
▲ The compact LQS housing can be moved and used anywhere in the factory.
矢田 一晃 ／ Kazuaki Yada
Marketing & Purchasing Director
LQS is a quality management system that monitors and manages quality data while measuring and judging it in real time.
The “U-WAVE” wireless measurement data communication system automatically transfers and inputs measured data to the LQS system's tablet by simply pressing a button on the measuring instrument. This eliminates careless mistakes such as misreading and writing errors that are common in work sites and reduces the burden on workers.In addition, by as a by-product of digitizing measurement data, we can promote paperless operations.
Since LQS measures and records trends on-site, if there is any problem, analyze the data collected in the medium to long term, such as one month to half a year, formulate hypotheses and try to implement improvements.By doing so, it leads to more essential quality improvements.
福正 博夫 ／ Hiroo Fukusho
Managing Director, FNS SOLUTIONS CO., LTD
From a conversation with Managing Director Oishi saying, "I have a problem in the factory ...", I, who has been a software engineer for 45 years, started developing "LINE QC SPECIALIST" to help solve the problem. Normally, it is difficult to perform 100% sorting in a mass-production factory for single item, so quality assurance is performed by sampling inspection.Basically, the entire process is done by human hands.
When sorted by human, oversights and operational errors can occur. LQS is also measured by workers by sampling, but the measurement data is automatically reflected in the system, so there is no mistake in writing or reading the numerical values. In addition, the system automatically alerts the user when the controlled specifications are reached. Further, the data recorded in LQS enables the prediction of "about to produce defective products..." By analyzing this accumulated data, it is possible to improve the efficiency of the entire factory and reduce the number of defective products such as improving various machines and the work styles of employees.