St. James Ballroom
Statistical Process Control in Manufacturing: A Collaborative Effort to Reduce Costs Associated with Batched Processes (303880)
*Kelsea Cox, The Boeing Company
Lindsay Jones, The Boeing Company
Robert M. Lawton, The Boeing Company
Keywords: collaboration, statistical process control, manufacturing, batching, sampling
Boeing is one of the largest aerospace manufacturing companies in the world, receiving parts and materials from hundreds of suppliers. To a large extent, Boeing's operating costs are driven by the cost of parts and materials, so it is in the business's best interest to enable reduction in suppliers’ manufacturing costs while maintaining a high standard of quality. Statistical Process Control (SPC) is a set of practices that allows reduced sampling while ensuring quality through control charts monitoring process stability. Boeing often works with suppliers establishing sound SPC practices to decrease cost through reduced sampling. However, many manufacturing processes involve batched processes which result in correlated samples and require special techniques for assessing capability and control limits. In order to develop bespoke SPC plans, Boeing Research & Technology must work in collaboration with the supplier, subject matter experts, and supplier management to understand and correctly model the variance components of the manufacturing process. In this presentation, we describe how Boeing and suppliers work together to implement SPC in the presence of batch effects.