SPC software Evaluation and Recommendations - Small Company

[jwmanager]

I have read many of the recommendations on this site for SPC software. Thanks BTW! I have tried the trials of NWA Quality Analyst and InfinityQS and looked at Minitab. We are a very small company and for what I need to do it seems a waste to purchase such expensive software. We have shops that make parts for us according to our drawings. My company inspects the incoming parts using CMM and other metrology tools. Our major customer is requiring us to monitor the tolerances of the parts we dimension. Our vendors don't use any statistics. So, it is really pretty much an activity to statisfy our customer. I am looking for a very simple software to do this. I am not computer proficient and my inspectors even less. I would like to make this as simple for them as possible. I could do more, like gage R&R or measure cpk with it if I had it. I am looking for an opinion if one of these software packages is better than the other (from what I see they are comparable) and if there is something better for my simple needs.

[jwmanager]

Thanks. I actually did check out a couple of the Excel programs. I think one was $159. It appeared complicated to set up for our use. We would want to do this routinely for all our parts. We probably have 1000 parts in our system. Some have over 85 dimensions. I need to have it integrate with our data collection somehow. Maybe an Excel program could? If it was that easy I am not sure it would be that cheap.

[Bev D]

OK your a small company but the many parts and characteristics make it complex. If you were only looking a few parts or characteristics, then I would suggest EXCEL...but the situtaion you describe requires an integrated data collection and chart organization structure. I would recommend Infinity QS or NWA. Minitab will require a lot of custom programming on your part and is not as intuitive....sorry. are you sure your customer is requiring SPC???? Can you charge them for this?

[jwmanager]

That is exactly what I wanted to hear. Thanks a lot. I suspected I would need more than Excel but I just didn't know. I appreciate the advice about Minitab.

[bgudauskas]

Make sure your CMM doesn't already have an SPC software with it. Many come with effective packages included.

[bobdoering]

In Reply to Parent Post by jwmanager

My company inspects the incoming parts using CMM and other metrology tools. Our major customer is requiring us to monitor the tolerances of the parts we dimension....So, it is really pretty much an activity to statisfy our customer. I am looking for a very simple software to do this.

You need the only the simplest software, in that what you are doing is taking measurements of randomized lots of product - nowhere near a representation of process control. You have no idea what the original distribution was, and your vendors apparently do not either. You can not determine a valid Cpk with this data, so I hope your customers are not requiring it. So, invest as little as possible in such nonsense. Run X hi/lo-R charts to visually capture the lot width variation should suffice. I would not bother with X bar-R chart for this type of report card charting.