Real Time Electronic SPC/Control Charting

[QE]

Hello,

Recently there is a direction to move away from paper based SPC and do electronic charting of the control charts.

Can some one wiht the experience explain an easy way to do this.

We have tensile testers which uses a MTS software. The software saves a file that is printed and a paper based charting is done in the current system.

My preference is to use Minitabs ODBC feature to have a real time SPC by pulling the data from a data base.

Can some one share their experience in some thing of this nature.

QE.

 

[Matt33]

One caution is that your MTS software will likely save the output in a file and each time a test is ran, it is likely to put the data into a NEW file. If this is how the output is saved, ODBC would not be a good solution since you would only be able to look at one output file at a time.
I am straddling the line of promoting a product (SQCpack) developed by the company I work for and providing an unbiased answer.
I think you should consider a solution that puts the tensile test results in a database where control and other charts can be done easily.

 

[Ninja]

I would suggest that you have two different things going on here:

1. an output file of data from your tensile tester
This is likely used for base calculations

2. a summation of that data into one or two points of interest (Mean, Median, Range, etc.)
This is likely used to determine P/F against tolerance or spec limits.

While there may be some value doing more analysis on each tests output file, SPC will likely give you a better read if done on the summary data lot to lot.

By all means, use electronic SPC...but consider using the Mean, Median and Range lot-to-lot for your SPC (or whatever constitutes acceptance criteria) rather than the raw output files.
...or both...

 

[QE]

Is there a way to have MTS write the data in a data base instead of seperate files ?

 

[Ninja]

Is there a way to have MTS write the data in a data base instead of seperate files ?

A good question to ask the vendor...they would know best, of course.