SOFTWARE & ANALYSIS

Advances in

Mobile Data Collection

Extend Qualitys Reach
Todays portable devices allow quality analysis technologies to extend beyond the plant floor for complete traceability and enhanced collaboration. BY DOUGLAS C. FAIR

communications have become commonodays consumer electronics are place for consumers. extraordinary. From advanced deskSo why not leverage this same techtop computers and handheld devices to nology in manufacturing? Communicacellular telephones, advanced, simpletion, collaboration and visibility are key to-use electronics are found everywhere. factors in managing quality from site What makes them truly exceptional is to site and from supplier to manufactheir ability to link to cellular networks turer. Using mobile devices to capture and the Internet, resulting in a global and share data where it was previously interconnectedness that, just a couple of unable to be collected has the potential decades ago, was the stuff to dramatically improve of science fiction fantasy. BENEFITS product quality. Immediate communi The use of mobile data colcation with people in diflection hardware to enter CURRENT STATE ferent countries is the rule critical quality and traceabilMany manufacturers rather than the exception. ity information and provide operate in a technological Free international phone data accessibility worldwide stone age when it comes calls can be made without is underutilized today. to data collection and the use of traditional tele Communication, collaborastorage. New technolocommunications technoltion and visibility are key gies are rarely used for ogies. Cell phones make factors in managing quality logging quality or inspeccalls without consuming from site to site and from tion data. To prove it, just cellular minutes. These supplier to manufacturer. look around a manufaceasily accessible and inex Using mobile devices to turing facilityfew compensive technologies allow capture and share data puters are found on the us to be on-line no matter where it was previously shop floor. Instead, the where someone is and unable to be collected has use of paper and pencil is at little cost. As a result, the potential to dramatically improve product quality. most prevalent. global, instantaneous

Product feature checks, safety checks checks, setup checks and a variety of other critical-to-quality data are still written on paper. Sometimes the data values are transcribed onto spreadsheets. Even then, different formats, errors in transcription and the cost of double-entering data can make the spreadsheets difficult to work with. They languish on individual computers like the electronic versions of paper that they are. Paper use is so widespread in some companies that on-site librarians are employed to manage the large amount of records. THE RESULT Paper-based systems make reporting extremely challenging. This is true even when the data has been typed into spreadsheets. A corporate quality director once relayed that it took a team of five people six entire days to track down all the quality data for one of its products. Why? Because the data the team needed was scattered across several paper-based systems. To complicate matters, most information technologies are focused on the plant itself. While on-site software products may be leveraged in lieu of paper, there exists minimal interest in communicating quality data outside of a plants four walls. Whether between supplier and manufacturer or from

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Todays quality infrastructures allow for data collection and analysis using an assortment of tablets and other mobile devices. Source: InfinityQS

one corporate-owned plant to another, there is a sense of whats mine is mine and whats yours is yours. As a result, plants and systems are often disconnected with little or no ability to communicate data outside of the four walls. THE FUTURE TODAY There are some manufacturing companies who have moved away from paper-based systems in exchange for electronic and even Web-based solutions. In fact, most companies already possess the infrastructure necessary to support mobile data collection, including access to: 1. A wired or wireless network 2. The Internet 3. A cellular network 4. Portable handheld electronic devices such as tablet computers and cellular telephones 5. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) If unfamiliar with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), consider how bank account balances can be checked online. Basically, users pull up a Web site and log in. Thats all. No need to install software

on your computer. In fact, one doesnt need a computer at all. You can check your balance using a tablet computer or smart phone from anywhere. Instantaneous access is available no matter the time of the day or the country in which you are standing. Best of all, when transactions occur, they are automatically posted. So when you check your balance, you are privy to the most upto-date data available, all in real-time. EXAMPLE Now imagine that this technology has replaced paper on the manufacturing shop floor. An operator uses a gage connected to a traditional computer to periodically measure his or her products and enter results. A roving inspector with a tablet computer slung over her shoulder walks from one production line to the next logging defect codes. A process engineer performs confirmatory checks with his cellular phone. Regardless of the hardware used, data is passed to a single, shared, centralized database. Database location is unimportant. It could be somewhere in cyberspace, such as a banks database. The critical

component is that the database is secured and users have access to the data. At the same time data is being entered, the plants quality manager is visiting a supplier. His plane has just landed in China. He takes out a handheld device, logs onto a wireless network and clicks a link. The result is a summary report of his home plants quality data for the past 24 hours. Because the quality checks are entered in real-time from his plant, the most recent data is always available. No waiting for a clerk to gather up paper on the shop floor. No waiting for an administrative assistant to interpret hand-written numbers and type them into a spreadsheet. Imagine also that his Shanghai supplier enters their quality data into the same database. As the quality manager gets into his taxi he logs onto the local cellular network. Then, he clicks on a different link on his cell phone. A report summarizes the Shanghai plants quality information for the past week. Since everything is online, he also receives e-mails from China when defect levels increase or when an alarm is triggered.

Companies are using mobile devices to collect and analyze data from an unlimited number of sites and suppliers. Source: InfinityQS

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SOFTWARE & ANALYSIS

mailing certificates of analysis. Users could just log onto the database, type in a lot code and get the information they need. Reporting. If traceability information is leveraged from one production step (and plant) to the next, the result is a linkage from raw materials to finished goods. If there happens to be a problem with a finished lot, all of the components, subcomponents and raw materials can be traced. This traceability dramatically improves the ability to track down problem causes and minimize recall costs. Also, raw materials can be traced to final finished goods. Manufacturers can trace global raw material consumption to the last plant where finished goods are packaged through a genealogical tree. In effect, mobile data collection and its related technologies could optimize supply chain efficiencies by dramatically improving information exchange while allowing an unheardof level of flexibility in data collection and reporting. By doing so, manufacturers could not only reduce overall costs of data collection and reporting, but they could further reduce global quality costs, protect final consumers from off-quality products and greatly expand data accessibility. While consumers enjoy a connectedness on par with something out of a science fiction novel from the 1960s or 1970s, manufacturing organizations, for the most part, have not been early adopters. And yet, the technology is available if they choose to use it. The use of mobile data collection hardware to enter critical quality and traceability information and provide data accessibility worldwide is underutilized today. It is as easy as leveraging existing IT infrastructures with commonly accessible and cost-effective mobile consumer technologies. By doing so, organizations can further remove costs from the overall supply chain, minimize the possibility of expensive recalls, prevent problems and improve product quality on a global scale. Q
Douglas C. Fair is VP of statistical applications at InfinityQS (Chantilly, VA). For more information, e-mail dfair@infinityqs.com, call (703) 961-0200 or visit www.infinityqs.com.

Regardless of where production takes place, portable data collection brings the quality system directly to the product. Source: InfinityQS

MOBILE DATA COLLECTION BENEFITS Nothing is actually new or futuristic about the aforementioned scenario. Instead, all of these technologies are readily available, and even inexpensive. Some of the most cutting-edge manufacturers are already employing these technologies today to save time, improve communication and control quality on a global level. These technologies make data collection, communication and global plant reporting easy. Most importantly, leveraging these technologies for quality systems should help mitigate or reduce the possibility of low quality or unsafe products getting into consumers hands, while minimizing costs across the supply chain. Here are some other benefits of mobile data collection: Collaboration. Problem-solving activities are driven by data. Without it, corrective actions are virtually impossible. Imagine that when an issue occurs, experts have instantaneous access to the data surrounding the event. When an alert is triggered

by off-quality product from a supplier in China, a quality engineer in Chicago receives an e-mail describing the event. Together, the responsible parties in both countries discuss the issue. These discussions lead to process control actions necessary to ensure off-quality product does not enter the supply chain. By doing so, global costs can be reduced while quality levels can be increased by those sharing a vested interest in the outcome. Traceability. Typically, organizations like to associate traceability fields, such as the shift, lot code or batch, to their quality data. That way, data can be sliced and diced based on what is most important. Now, assume that each vendor and supplier associates a common traceability fieldsuch as a lot codeto each manufacturing step at each plant. From raw materials and subcomponents to final product assembly, data is passed to a shared database. If so, then wombto-tomb traceability would be a reality. No more paper. No more

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