QUALITY ANALYSIS OF BRAZING PROCESS (ACCURATE BRAZING CORPORATION)
About
Accurate Brazing corporation receives parts such as 'buckets' used for power generation turbines and performs value-adding services such as vacuum brazing in their facility at Greenville, SC. Each part is valued to be around $15,000, and hence any rework or scrap in these parts will yield a heavy loss for the company.
QUALITY ANALYSIS
Quality analysis was performed on different manual processes in the company ranging from visual inspection of incoming parts to processing them and a final inspection before shipping them back to the consumer. All the different ways their process could go out of control were measured using lean manufacturing tools such as charting a Process Map, devising a Process Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (PFMEA) chart, and creating a Control plan. All these were done along with the Quality Engineering Team of Accurate Brazing.
PROCESS MAP
A detailed Process map was charted according to the hierarchical order of the processes followed in the facility. Various checkpoints in the process and sub-process involved to help continuously monitor the overall process were depicted in the process map.
PFMEA
A PFMEA was devised along with the Quality Engineering team of Accurate Brazing to verify and evaluate the company's current process in terms of efficiency and failure rate. Different failure modes in the company were ranked according to its Risk Prioritization Number (RPN), which is the product of the failure modes' Severity, Occurrence, and Detection ratings.
CONTROL PLAN
Created a control plan after performing the PFMEA to monitor the process performance metrics.