How do you manage your Inspection Drawings?

[LesPiles]

Hello Dear Covers!

We are a small business and drawings of mechanical plans we do are mainly manufacturing drawings - i.e. for the parts to be produced by our subcontractors - which are metal sheet companies.

These parts are then received by Quality Inspector at receiving. At this stage, until fairly recently, we had experienced employees (we were processing in the past metal fabrication for our products) and we relied on those for inspection (which dimensions to check, etc.).

However, things being what they are, the world is now changing and we now have a new inspector, other inspectors having left for retirement. We are facing a rather severe turbulence on the inspection. Add to this that we now face for the first time the requirements of the automotive sector for a contract, which require the application of a PPAP (with dimensional measurements).

For identification of significant dimensional measurements, it is relatively under control. I formed a team composed of a mechanical designer and a quality technician. To these may be added other internal resources as needed: a quality inspector, a production operator, and a product engineer. We obviously agreed that these measures would be identified by balloons on the drawing.

Regarding management of drawings for inspection, it is a little less defined. Several questions arise...

Questions:

• How do you manage bubble drawings?

• Do you have two sets of drawings for a particular part: one for manufacturing and another one for inspection?

• If so, it's like multiplying documents by two ... This means double storage space, double documents when an ECR has an impact ...

• If you do not use a separate drawing for inspection (i.e. if your bubble drawings are sent to the supplier), aren’t you afraid that your supplier pays attention only to these measures (bubbles)?

To sum up, tell me more about inspection drawings …

Thank you in advance to those who will help me!

LesPiles

 

[hogheavenfarm]

Can't answer all of this , as we are not TS, although some products get a full PPAP anyway. It is not beneficial to produce multiple drawings when it can be avoided. Quality has access to all the drawings, so we tend to print what is useful to us, (DXF's, details) along with the "full" drawing. We conduct a FPI on the drawing, stamp it, and scan it into the file, then throw out the 'extra' drawing. As for suppliers, most don't know what a bubble dimension means, so it makes little difference, but if the dimension is truly critical, it should not be held at the expense of other 'less critical' dimensions. When we supply a drawing to a vendor, I come down hard (at first) on the early product, if I do that, subsequent product holds very well. If I let them slide , even a tiny bit, I can expect much worse material in the pipeline.

 

[msandilands]

OK here goes.
In short we do not write on drawings.
We keep electronic copies on the server and hard copies issued to the inspection records. A register is kept of these document issues.
The inspection records then describe the records to be made when approving parts made at each manufacturing operation.

If drawings are issued to production they are issued as uncontrolled copies specific to a single works order and destroyed when the order has been completed.

Where PPAP is required by the customer a drawing will be marked up with numbered bubbles and scanned into the Part Submission folder set up for that PPAP. The numbered bubbles are referenced on the dimensional report in the PPAP.
This is a customer requirement for our PPAP's.
The "bubble" copy of the drawing is then destroyed.

 

[Crimpshrine13]

When we do the PPAP, I create a balooned drawing from the original drawing (customer drawing since we're not design responsible) by placing the numbering on each dimension, but this is used only for PPAP, and is not a controlled copy. Once I use it on PPAP, it stays with the PPAP and no where else.

But, if you have certain dimensions that your inspectors must check at receiving inspection on a regular basis, I would assume you want to create and keep drawing for the inspection process, which is separate from manufacturing process drawing.

In our case, we have manufacturing process drawing for each manufacturing processes (we have two processes, so two separate drawings), and once we receive plated parts, we do the receiving inspection (only sampling) with gages and X-ray fluorescent, but all parts go into machine inspection and ultimately the machines are set to OEM specification, so we don't necessarily have inspection drawing.

But, in your case, I would assume that you should to have drawings for each processes including for inspection, but that does not have to be the balooned drawing attached to the PPAP unless your inspectors are checking all the dimensions on the drawing like when you do the PPAP. In other words, if the inspectors are checking every dimension on the drawing, maybe you could utilize the same balooned drawing?

 

[rodentfish]

We take our customers drawing and balloon the entire thing, we use this for PPAP and for 1st piece inspection. We then take the ballooned drawing and remove any of the balloons to the dimensions that were not going to have our operators inspect. We further break it down by color coding the remaining ballooned dimensions by hourly inspection, daily inspection and 100% inspection.

Red Balloon = Hourly Inspection
Blue Balloon = Once daily and after any tooling change.
Green Balloon = 100% Each Part

 

[Valeri]

Rodentfish, I love your "kissed" process - sweet & simple.

I'm wondering what issues you would have using the "colored bubble" drawing for PPAP; the fmea and CP will show the inspection points anyway and it would provide a 2nd review of the process.

 

[rodentfish]

Hi Valeri
When I submit my drawings with a PPAP (and 1st pcs), the entire ballooned drawing is the same color. I don't break it down into the various inspection requirement colors until I send it to the floor (hope that answers your question).

I also forgot to mention that when I receive a print that is all GD&T, I’ll create a separate process print for my operators to inspect against (unless it’s a fixture inspection).

 

[auditorsos]

OK here goes.
In short we do not write on drawings.
We keep electronic copies on the server and hard copies issued to the inspection records. A register is kept of these document issues.
The inspection records then describe the records to be made when approving parts made at each manufacturing operation.

If drawings are issued to production they are issued as uncontrolled copies specific to a single works order and destroyed when the order has been completed.

Where PPAP is required by the customer a drawing will be marked up with numbered bubbles and scanned into the Part Submission folder set up for that PPAP. The numbered bubbles are referenced on the dimensional report in the PPAP.
This is a customer requirement for our PPAP's.
The "bubble" copy of the drawing is then destroyed.

Interesting msandilands as we are trying to streamline our 'production packs' at present. What we have is:
- The Engineering Design Pack
- Master Production Pack which will contain ALL documentation relevant to the production process
- The area production pack(s) - This could be one for the specific area with all necessary general assemblies and mechanical parts, and one pack for the machine shop with all mechanical parts.

Currently a work order / job sheet is raised. The machine shop receive the order and go to the 'controlled' production pack, grab the drawing and manufacture the part. The drawing stays with the part through to inspection (within the department) and the work order and part will then move through to the next stage of production assembly.
The machine shop drawing will 'eventually' get filed away.

However, we are finding that the machine shop will pile up their copies of drawings and maybe once a week file them, but they have an issue remembering where they came from, they cannot remember all of the parts (OK, some that are made more frequently they'll know), so they come to me (the Librarian) asking where the drawing is from which folder, as it is not clear from the drawing which model it refers (not always, as we have many common parts too).

I have discussed this with the QM who is also the CEO of the company, and suggested that since we have a more streamlined Work Order Management System (WOMS for short), why can't we do away with the production pack in the machine shop and print out a 'for one time use only' drawing that accompanies the work order. He is less than keen on this idea However, a couple of guys in the MS are from ex-military manufacturing places and this is how it works, and it works effectively.

The QM has requested me to list the Pros and Cons on this and he may consider this.

As a side note all of our documentation is retained on a terastation server which everyone has access to of which I maintain, so the most up to date documentation should be where it should.

Do other manufacturing companies issue drawings with Work Order / Job sheets?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Golfman25]

Yes. We attach the drawing to the work order. Drawing can be printed from computer network. We actually record our set up inspection results on the print. When complete the work order/print is filed away in a bankers box if we ever need to look at it. Pulling, filing, and fe-filing is a major time suck, so eliminate it if possible.

 

[Kronos147]

Questions:

• How do you manage bubble drawings?

• Do you have two sets of drawings for a particular part: one for manufacturing and another one for inspection?

• If so, it's like multiplying documents by two ... This means double storage space, double documents when an ECR has an impact ...

• If you do not use a separate drawing for inspection (i.e. if your bubble drawings are sent to the supplier), aren’t you afraid that your supplier pays attention only to these measures (bubbles)?

LesPiles

There have been many good answers thus far.

●How do you manage bubble drawings?
I make the bubble drawing, I use scan it, use it, and send it to the customer along with the FAIR - AS9102 format.

That's our shop, but I could see using a dimensional inspection sheet that simple defines the bubbles, tolerances, and lists results instead. I could see NOT sending it to the customer.

●Do you have two sets of drawings for a particular part: one for manufacturing and another one for inspection?
If I can put the inspection dimensions on the traveler, I prefer that. If they are easy to find on the print, then, no, one print only. If the part is complex, I go to the bubble drawing and the form 3 of the AS9102 (the dimensional results).

●If so, it's like multiplying documents by two ... This means double storage space, double documents when an ECR has an impact ...
I figure there is a new bubble drawing and new FAIR each time there is a rev change. That is important to ensure product quality. My IT background says scan stuff (AS YOU GET IT!!!!), get rid of paper copies.

IMHO - If you don't scan as you get it, no one goes back and does it.

●If you do not use a separate drawing for inspection (i.e. if your bubble drawings are sent to the supplier), aren’t you afraid that your supplier pays attention only to these measures (bubbles)?

I answer your question with questions:
If you do not use a separate drawing for inspection, how do you inspect?
How do you determine what needs to be inspected if not all?
How do you ensure it is consistently done per procedure?

Cheers!