Identification of the Inspection Specifications for Achieving Zero Defect Manufacturing

The contemporary manufacturing landscape is characterized by increased volatility shortened product life cycles and increased degree of product customization. Manufacturing companies are continuously facing the challenge of operating their manufacturing processes and systems in order to deliver the required production rates of high quality products, while minimizing the use of resources. They can achieve this with a concept named Zero Defect Manufacturing. This concept implies that inspection is performed to all the parts and therefore they can achieve zero defects. The problem is that inspection can be either time consuming process or a very expensive process. The goal of the current research work is a methodology for the identification of the acceptable inspection specification in order for the production system to stay efficient and at the same time produce non-defected products. In other words the outcome of this paper will be a set of maps that depicts which can be the acceptable inspection characteristics such as inspection time and inspection cost.