Redefining quality inspection processes in mechanical and plant engineering

This article takes a look at the challenges faced by manufacturing companies in mechanical and plant engineering in the area of quality assurance. In addition to quality control, the use case of outgoing goods control is also examined and inspiration is given for a rollout of a Connected Worker Platform (CWP) along the value stream.

• Simplified and centralized document management

  Document managers can reduce maintenance and management efforts for QA documents by using a Connected Worker Platform (CWP): In addition to providing an intuitive document structure, media such as images and videos can be easily inserted and updated in documents. If the topics of versioning and approval process are important, a Connected Worker Platform offers the possibility that the approval of a document has to be done by a supervisor or other colleagues, for example. Changes in documents can also be documented and traced through a document history. Likewise, a CWP offers the possibility to manage all documents for several plants centrally in one software and to organize and release them clearly by means of structured classes like location, department, product, etc.

• Creation and assignment of variant-specific test documents

  By using modules that can represent variant-specific work steps and can also be maintained and updated centrally, a CWP makes it possible to create a variant-specific inspection protocol with just a few clicks. When creating orders, the documents specific to the model series for customer-specific machines or plants can thus be assigned and directly allocated to individual employees.

  The full potential can be achieved by linking to an ERP or ME system, by automatically generating order or variant-specific orders in CWP based on order data, and by providing precisely fitting inspection checklists, etc. to the employees.

• Reduction of the interpretation effort for employees and increase of process reliability

  Providing variant-specific quality inspection documents represents one side of the coin for context-based information provision - the other side can be covered with a CWP by simply incorporating media: Instead of explaining complex information in whole text blocks, detailed information can be conveyed much more easily with images or explanatory videos and the interpretation effort can be reduced.

  Furthermore, mandatory interactions, visual threshold checks and integrated conditions guide quality staff step-by-step through the individual inspection steps in a process-safe manner. This helps to increase overall process stability.

• Increasing the quality of documentation

  Since mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, which usually have an integrated camera, are usually used when employees use a CWP, photos or videos of findings do not have to be taken separately, but can be taken/recorded and documented directly in the digital checklist. This means that there is no longer any media or system discontinuity and all information is bundled centrally in the software.

  Not only can process reliability be increased through the previously mentioned mandatory fields, threshold value returns or automatic conditions, but also documentation quality, as employees are encouraged to carry out documentation according to predefined standards. Furthermore, through the connection to external sensors, measured values can be called up in the digital checklist at the push of a button, so that the documentation quality also increases when these test values are recorded and any documentation errors are avoided.

• Increased process transparency and faster response time to problems

  Connected worker platforms present the status quo of processes in real-time data. This gives department managers in particular the opportunity to obtain a good overview of current jobs and tasks. If problems or errors are detected by employees during quality checks, they can be quickly documented by the integrated incident management and corrective measures can be initiated promptly with the help of tasks and live chat functionality. As a result, unnecessary delays in the processing and throughput times of system components or machines can be reduced or even avoided altogether.

• Integration of testing steps (worker self-inspection) already during plant assembly

  Digitization projects often provide the trigger to rethink existing processes and optimize them in the context of digitization. For example, it can often be seen in practice that previously separate processes such as assembly and quality control are now interlinked in digital checklists. Digital assembly instructions with integrated worker self-inspection thus ensure that a quality check is performed immediately after each assembly step for machines and systems. This ensures that the quality standard is already met during plant assembly. Another advantage is that downstream quality checks can be carried out in a simplified form or even on a random sample basis, since a detailed check has already been carried out during assembly.

• Automatic report generation and simplified research or error analysis

  An enormous advantage of a CWP is the automatic reporting of the complete documentation of activities carried out. Since there is no need for analog folder archives at all, but instead the documentation is centrally stored in software, the search for and traceability of individual component serial numbers, for example, is more efficient and simpler.

  Reports can also be exported as PDFs or saved to external drives through automation - report data can also be fed back to connected external systems. Often seen is that the obtained process data is exported to an external analytics tool to bring the process data together with data from other business units or product data. This enables machine and plant manufacturers to achieve the maximum for professional data-based derivation of improvement measures.