Control Plan Entries - Outgoing Visual Inspection - What should be on a Control Plan?

[Bobbinz]

Dear All

There has been some debate here at work lately regarding what should be on a control plan, and I just wondered what people's opinions were.

Working in the semiconductor manufacturing industry we generally want controls on the C/P to be measurable using methods that have a robust MSA procedure. However, some stages such as manual visual inspection are generally subjective and thus don't really suit MSA practises. It has been decided therefore, that visual inspection should not be included on the C/P. However, others believe that visual inspection (particularly OVQ inspection) *is* a control as it, to some degree, protects the customer from recieving potentially defect product. Section 6 of the APQP Control Plan manual actually states that inspections are a valid form of control, but the manual only appears to refer to MSA of measurement and test systems.

Anybody care to add their views opinions?

Thanks for reading
BBz

 

[ScottK]

Re: Control Plan entries

If one is using visual inspection as criteria for acceptance, how can it not be a control point?

 

[Bobbinz]

Re: Control Plan entries

That is true, it is a control point, but the very subjective nature of it has deemed it inappropriate to many. Please note, the views described above are not my own, I am mediating! Hence the requirement for further input from the helpful Covers

 

[Miner]

Re: Control Plan entries

You could perform an attribute agreement analysis to assess the repeatability and reproducibility of visual inspection.

 

[Marc]

OVQ Inspection

<snip> (particularly OVQ inspection) <snip>

For those of us following along, what is OVQ inspection?

 

[Bobbinz]

Re: OVQ Inspection

Oops sorry, thought it was a standard acronym, my bad. It is Outgoing Visual Quality

 

[Marc]

Re: OVQ Inspection

No problem - OVQ is an acronym I have not seen used before and I'm kinda nutty in wanting to be sure those of us who are not familiar with certain acronyms (myself included) know what they are.

 

[Bobbinz]

Re: Control Plan entries

You could perform an attribute agreement analysis to assess the repeatability and reproducibility of visual inspection.

For some reason, my boss seems to be against R&R on manual inspection. Perhaps he needs convincing otherwise. I'm not sure why he's so against having manual inspection on the control plan, I think it is assumed it leaves too many "awkward question" invites from external auditors so he is trimming it in attempt to make it auditor proof. I assumed a customer would welcome an inspection on the C/P rather than leaving it out completely.

 

[ScottK]

Re: What should be on a Control Plan - Control Plan Entries

I'm in printing so visual quality is everything.
But you can quantify a lot of that if you choose to - missing print, smears, ink spatter, can all be measured and counted through various means. Color can even be measured with a spectrophotometer.


Now - back to things that are inspected just by eye....Isn't that what the "detection" number in the FMEA is for?
If there is a wide gap in perception of a visual defect then the detection number might be higher, which might trigger one to start quantifying some the "visual" items as preventive actions.

 

[Jim Wynne]

Re: What should be on a Control Plan - Control Plan Entries - Outgoing Visual Inspect

Dear All

There has been some debate here at work lately regarding what should be on a control plan, and I just wondered what people's opinions were.

Working in the semiconductor manufacturing industry we generally want controls on the C/P to be measurable using methods that have a robust MSA procedure. However, some stages such as manual visual inspection are generally subjective and thus don't really suit MSA practises. It has been decided therefore, that visual inspection should not be included on the C/P. However, others believe that visual inspection (particularly OVQ inspection) *is* a control as it, to some degree, protects the customer from recieving potentially defect product. Section 6 of the APQP Control Plan manual actually states that inspections are a valid form of control, but the manual only appears to refer to MSA of measurement and test systems.

Anybody care to add their views opinions?

Thanks for reading
BBz

The process of visual inspection--or any kind of inspection for that matter--is a measurement system. There are standards against which products are compared. While the idea should be to remove subjectivity as far as possible, it's not unusual for visual inspection to be less than 100% objective. That's one of the main reasons you should be doing comparisons as Miner suggested; you should know something about how subjectivity affects the process.

Simply dropping something from the control plan (and, presumably altering the PFMEA) won't make it go away.