Low Resource Gage Screening

Abstract

Quality managers are responsible for maintaining gage surveillance systems and ensuring compliance to ISO/TS requirements. Resource requirements for current approaches make ongoing assessment of gage variability and functional accuracy costly for a large number of gages often found in manufacturing operations. Any industry with facilities having variable gages is potentially impacted by gage assessment costs or the consequences of no assessment. This research addresses the quality manager's question of how to proactively screen a large number of gages for variation concerns using limited resources. Damaging variation in measurements can arise since the time of gage purchase due to wear or new, inexperienced personnel. Gage triage analysis is a range-based statistical procedure that enables efficient, cost-effective screening of a large number of gages for variability and/or functional accuracy. The ease of implementation will appeal to quality managers: two to five appraisers each measure the same 10 parts one time. This process is estimated to use less than 50 percent of the resources of current methods while also reducing production disruption time. The gage triage analysis (GTA) gage ranking is shown to identify likely high variability gages, which should be confirmed with traditional methods. This proactive screening can identify problem-gaging processes before issues occur and avoid some gage-related quality upsets.

• accuracy
• GARR
• GRR
• GTA
• repeatability
• reproducibility
• surveillance

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Victor E. Kane

Victor E. Kane is an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Statistics and Analytical Sciences at Kennesaw State University. He teaches graduate quality control, Six Sigma, and design of experiments. Kane holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Emory University, a doctorate in statistics from Florida State University, and an MBA from the University of Tennessee. He received the Craig Award from the ASQ Automotive Division for his paper on capability indices. He served as a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award examiner for three years and a Georgia Oglethorpe Award examiner for four years. Kane retired from a 22–year career with Ford Motor Company where he served in many operating positions including plant quality manager and European Powertrain quality director. He received a recognition award as Ford's top ranked lean manufacturing plant manager in 1999 and received Ford's Customer Driven Quality Award for developing the dimensional control planning process. He can be reached by email at [email protected].