Welcome to September, 2019 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.
Our core subject of Quality Management – Road Ahead to Digital Transformation during the year 2019, we have covered The Basics of Digitization, Digitalization and Digital Transformation, The foundation of the Digital Quality Management, Quality 4.0 and Industry 4.0 technologies Big Data Analytics, Cloud computing, Robotics, Augmented Reality and Simulation.
We will now take up fourth of the nine disruptive technologies of Industry 4.0 – Additive Manufacturing (AM).
Additive Manufacturing (AM) is an appropriate name to describe the technologies that build 3D objects by adding layer-upon-layer of material, whether the material is plastic, metal, concrete or one day…..human tissue.[1]
Common to AM technologies is the use of a computer, 3D modelling software (Computer Aided Design or CAD), machine equipment and layering material. Once a CAD sketch is produced, the AM equipment reads in data from the CAD file and lays downs or adds successive layers of liquid, powder, sheet material or other, in a layer-upon-layer fashion to fabricate a 3D object.
The term AM encompasses many technologies including subsets like 3D Printing, Rapid Prototyping (RP), Direct Digital Manufacturing (DDM), layered manufacturing and additive fabrication.
AM application is limitless. Early use of AM in the form of Rapid Prototyping focused on preproduction visualization models. More recently, AM is being used to fabricate end-use products in aircraft, dental restorations, medical implants, automobiles, and even fashion products.
Some envision AM as a complement to foundational subtractive manufacturing (removing material like drilling out material) and to lesser degree forming (like forging). Regardless, AM may offer consumers and professionals alike, the accessibility to create, customize and/or repair product, and in the process, redefine current production technology.
Additive manufacturing first emerged in 1987 with stereolithography (SL), a process that solidifies thin layers of ultraviolet (UV) light‐sensitive liquid polymer using a laser. Since then, various other technologies have been invented such as fused deposition modelling (FDM), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), PolyJet, Electron Beam Melting (EBM), etc.
Selecting the right additive manufacturing machine is vital to achieving the desired quality and lead time. However, the part is only as good as the design. A typical design process involves defining the design space, fixing the boundary conditions, applying loads, defining manufacturing constraints, running topology optimization, and analysing the optimized design to match the desired performance.
The primary hurdle for AM today is the fabrication and post-processing times which are not suitable for high-volume production. The fabrication lead time can be addressed by adding machines. However, the post-processing times are significant and increase with part complexity.[2]
In a TEDxYoungstown Additive Manufacturing, Brett Conner discusses 3D printing and additive manufacturing.
ANSYS Additive Manufacturing Simulation inside ANSYS Workbench 19.0 – Example 1 – The video shows the whole process to build a simulation model for Additive Manufacturing with ANSYS Workbench 19.0.
3D printing and additive manufacturing: one and the same? The experts say no. Though these two terms are often used synonymously, there are key differences between the two. While 3D printing is the motor behind additive manufacturing, additive manufacturing in and of itself is much more than just 3D printing. Additive manufacturing often involves product design, development of innovative technologies to create even greater manufacturing efficiency, enforcing quality assurance measures, and more![3]
America Makes and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) joining forces to establish the Additive Manufacturing Standardization Collaborative (AMSC). The AMSC is a body comprised of the full array of interested stakeholders worldwide—including OEMs, government, academia, standards consortia—and aims to create a road-map assessment of the state of standards and standards gaps in AM.6 In early 2017, AMSC published its initial draft of this assessment—Standardization road map for additive manufacturing, version 1.0 (hereafter referred to as “the AMSC road map”).7 [4]
While AM brings valuable opportunities to the industry it also comes with a series of challenges for the engineers: the reliability of the mechanical properties of the final part still has some uncertainty and is not fully supported by standard engineering tools…. Comprehensive data collection, management, and traceability across multiple batch is required to address these challenges. This enables the correlation between the manufacturing process parameters and part performance, which can reveal the key influences in the variability of the process; in addition, collecting the process data can provide predictive part performance using statistical models. Finally, the data traceability can be used to calibrate and account for variation between two printing machines, to insure quality control.[5]
As manufacturing becomes more responsive, connected, quick and customizable, new and more flexible metrology techniques for machined, molded, cast and AM parts will become more important.[6]
We will now turn to our regular sections:
For the present episode we have picked up article, Abandon The Unproductive & Obsolete: A Surefire Way to Increase Productivity, Spark Innovation & Reduce Costs, by Editorial Staff, on Decision Making column of Management Matters Network …. “If effective management of capital resources was Drucker’s first test for improving corporate productivity, systematic abandonment of the unproductive and obsolete was his first law of implementation.”
We now watch ASQ TV, wherein we look at a few recent videos:
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- How BBQ Can Help in a Technologically Disruptive World – In a culture of behaviour based quality (BBQ) all employees work in harmony to improve the number of successes versus non-successes – to create a set of planned, expected and measurable outcomes.
The full presentation of the Webinar can be viewed here.
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- Become a Better Quality Leader – Learn about the different levels of leadership that an organization needs to succeed, as well as four key ideas that will help you become a more effective manager and leader.
Mike Turner’s Full Interview – HERE
David Deacon’s Article – HERE
Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems posting for August 2019 is:
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- Beliefs and Expectations – We move forward and become like that which we think about. We behave not in accordance with the truth but with the truth as we perceive and believe it to be. Therefore, when you expect the best from yourself and others, you behave in ways that almost guarantee you are going to get it…However, the same seems to be true when you expect trouble. You set yourself up for trouble in numerous little ways and sure enough, trouble comes knocking at your door.
- Customer-Focused Environment – Organizations must extend their definition of customers – The quality standards, issues and performance are goals people can rally around, unlike other goals like cost reduction or productivity improvement. The purpose of all work and all improvement effort is to better serve the customer. Just as some people are apt to translate quality too narrowly, so too may we consider customers in the same restrictive sense. One of the single most powerful revelations has been that customers are not only external but internal as well…The focus on internal customers and satisfying their needs toward improving external customer satisfaction has the potential to transform the organization from one of departmental boundaries and barriers into one of complementing rather than competing activities…The organization that is capable of multi-department, cross-functional teamwork on a daily basis is one where processes are seen as related parts of the total quality system. People working in such an environment better understand not only the organization’s mission, but their own role toward its accomplishment. Consequently, people are better able to fulfill their tasks and to improve on them.
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I look forward to receiving your inputs / suggestions that can further enrich our discussions on the subject of Digitalization in the Quality Management
Note: The images depicted here above are through courtesy of respective websites who have the copyrights for the respective images.
[1] What is Additive Manufacturing?
[2] Additive Manufacturing: The “Cool Factor” in Manufacturing
[3] 3D printing and additive manufacturing are not quite the same
[4] 3D opportunity for standards
[5] Big Data Management in Additive Manufacturing
[6] A new joint whitepaper from Autodesk and Faro examines smart metrology for additive manufacturing
The world is too small? or Is it? 