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A Computational Model for Intelligent Manufacturing

28 points by apsec112 6y ago

michaericalribo 6y ago
I work in this space, and it’s always interesting to see how others are solving similar problems—and exciting! Classical methods (under the auspices of “SPC”, alluded to in this post) are very outdated, but also, very ingrained in manufacturing circles. I’m disappointed to see this only applied to a “toy” example...the real value is proven (or not, as is often the case) when the “rubber meets the road” and is applied to real problems on the factory floor. A POC like this is a nice demo, a fun exercise, but a long way from “productionized and used by real manufacturers.” The lack of a real example suggest to me this hasn’t actually been used in the field... I’m also curious how one would communicate a very technical/abstract model like this to existing practitioners of eg Six Sigma. My experience has been there is a lot of friction in introducing new methods in such an old-school setting: not only do old habits die hard, but quality engineers are often hired explicitly to do particular six sigma analyses. The difficulty is in convincing a client that these methods (a) can be useful and reliable in the context of traditional methods, and (b) aren’t intended to replace their role. I’ve seen the most traction w methods that connect directly to established SPC procedures, while also pushing the limits of these known and _interpretable_ techniques.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Some industries abandoned testing at every step, decades ago. It was expensive, slow and yielded very little benefit when the process is well controlled. An 'out of box audit' on the shipping dock could catch rare problems in process. Then the issue could be traced back to the step that introduced the failure, and the process corrected. E.g. a change in a part vendor that sometimes didn't meet spec could be caught very quickly before it got to (many) customer(s). And it's cheap to do it this way. Perhaps this computational model is useful if step-by-step testing is automated, cheap and quick.

28 points by apsec112 6y ago

I work in this space, and it’s always interesting to see how others are solving similar problems—and exciting! Classical methods (under the auspices of “SPC”, alluded to in this post) are very outdated, but also, very ingrained in manufacturing circles. I’m disappointed to see this only applied to a “toy” example...the real value is proven (or not, as is often the case) when the “rubber meets the road” and is applied to real problems on the factory floor. A POC like this is a nice demo, a fun exercise, but a long way from “productionized and used by real manufacturers.” The lack of a real example suggest to me this hasn’t actually been used in the field... I’m also curious how one would communicate a very technical/abstract model like this to existing practitioners of eg Six Sigma. My experience has been there is a lot of friction in introducing new methods in such an old-school setting: not only do old habits die hard, but quality engineers are often hired explicitly to do particular six sigma analyses. The difficulty is in convincing a client that these methods (a) can be useful and reliable in the context of traditional methods, and (b) aren’t intended to replace their role. I’ve seen the most traction w methods that connect directly to established SPC procedures, while also pushing the limits of these known and _interpretable_ techniques.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

Some industries abandoned testing at every step, decades ago. It was expensive, slow and yielded very little benefit when the process is well controlled. An 'out of box audit' on the shipping dock could catch rare problems in process. Then the issue could be traced back to the step that introduced the failure, and the process corrected. E.g. a change in a part vendor that sometimes didn't meet spec could be caught very quickly before it got to (many) customer(s). And it's cheap to do it this way. Perhaps this computational model is useful if step-by-step testing is automated, cheap and quick.