Home  News & Events EM Sleuth Retro Reporting -- Like Freezing Your Dog
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Retro Reporting -- Like Freezing Your Dog |
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“Hey Mr. Sleuth, I know exactly what you are talking about,” said Wise Guy Eddie leaning his folding chair against the wall at a dangerously steep angle. “But I’ve got a hot date tonight. So … to be as concise as possible… I would say it’s something like freezing your dog.”
What is he talking about, I thought. Look at him smirking over there with his friends, just about as far away as he can get.
Ever since Parts ‘R Us saved gigabucks reducing its dependence on hard gages, the company’s president became a major believer in the transformational potential of Enterprise Metrology. So that’s how I found myself in their metrology lab teaching this little class on the last Tuesday of every month. The subject of this session was “Getting More Out of Measurement Data,” and the question I asked Eddie was “What is granular data and why is it important?”
Wise Guy Eddy is the first shift CMM operator and actually knows his stuff. Over the course of last year, we met privately from time to time. The boss wanted me to introduce him to special metrology software tools, so he could help engineering streamline some of Parts ‘R Us manufacturing processes. He’s a fast learner, and now he has all the answers.
I knew from experience that Eddie enjoyed pulling my chain and if you bit on this stuff, he almost always had a great comeback. Thinking it would be wise to give him a little room, I asked Eddie to explain himself.
“Well, you were saying that we could get a lot more parts to pass our CMM inspections of these wickedly complex bolt hole patterns if we best-fit our measurement results to the nominal pattern. This would give us kind of a virtual gage that would allow us to ship more parts but it wouldn’t be cheating, only being smart.
“But what if a couple months later, rejects turn up in a group of parts that we’d inspected. That would call the whole technique into question even though we know it was a good thing to do.
“Then some manufacturing engineer genius, like Joe over there, comes to the rescue. He gets a bright idea (for a change) and theorizes that the problem doesn’t even have anything to do with what we were originally reporting on. He thinks the problem has to do with the form of one or more of the part features, and maybe we can prove it by making a different kind of report.
“But there’s the catch,” Eddie continued. “All that we’ll have are the reports we generated when we measured the parts. They only give us a high level look at the bolt hole pattern and the features making it up. They don’t tell us in any detail what the individual features look like.
“But if we had saved all the hits on the part—the granular data—we could go back, regenerate the information and use it over again. So it’s like freezing your dog.”
Ever since Joe’s name was mentioned, he was listening to Eddie carefully. “What in Hades are you talking about?” rasped Joe, shaking his head.
“Let me translate,” said Smittie, the second shift CMM operator and one of the Wise Guy’s good friends. “Rumor has it that the well-to-do these days are freezing their newly deceased pets instead of burying them. They aren’t quite sure what that will get them. But maybe someday amazing tools will let them reconstruct good old Fido or clone him -- stuff that we couldn’t do if we only kept his picture.”
“That’s it!” said Eddie. “They saved all the doggy data in the form of Fido’s frozen body. Later, it can be used any way the owners want. And now it’s date time for me.”
“Not so fast,” snapped Joe. “We have a real problem, and you have to help me fix it before you go.” His laser-look froze Eddie at the door.
“Major Motors has been having engine warranty problems with some cars they shipped last October. This batch of cars runs too hot and the fuel economy is down.
They think it might have something to do with the pistons we made for them. All of the quality reports show we met their specs, but (just like in the bolt hole pattern example we were just talking about) form tolerance wasn’t one of them. It’s possible we had a form tolerance problem back then. We need to find out if that’s what happened and why.”
“Bummer,” said Eddie.
“Worse than that for you,” said Joe. “The boss has agreed to have you come in early every morning to measure and analyze a truckload of Major Motor’s faulty pistons. That is unless you and I can figure how to check our form tolerance hypothesis some other way?”
“Sorry, tonight I am otherwise engaged,” shot Eddie.
“Then you will be in here early in the morning puttering with pistons,” Joe fired back. “I think you’ll be needing a good night’s sleep. Better not stay out late.”
“I don’t think so,” said the Wise Guy.
“How’s that,” grunted Joe.
“I froze the dog.”
“What?”
Eddie explained, “Since Mr. Sleuth started showing me about Enterprise Metrology, I have been saving the point data for the inspections we make on critical parts. And all of Major Motor’s parts are critical. Just ask them.
“So I’ve kept all kinds of point data on those parts. It only cost me a little hard drive space. In the morning, I will just check the form of each of those pistons by sucking in the old data, reprocessing it to evaluate the form and generating a graphic report that shows what each one that went into October shipments looks like. You’ll have it on your desk before noon.”
And with that Wise Guy Eddie, disappeared out the door. No more frozen dogs. Just a hot date.
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Wilcox Associates, Inc.
250 Circuit Drive
North Kingstown, RI 02852
Toll Free Phone: 800.343.7933
Phone: 401.886.2000
Fax: 401.886.2727
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