The design of new custom automated equipment and the process improvement associated with it is the forte of manufacturing, process, automation and industrial engineers.
DFSS (Design for Six Sigma), Six Sigma & Kaizen rely on a measurement phase prior to analyzing the data.
Traditional measurement has been done by CMM’s (Coordinate Measuring Machines)
However this task is time consuming, laborious and not Real Time. This is where Machine Vision Inspection System can provide an immediate return on investment.
Machine Vision Systems are
- Real Time
- Work with NIST traceable standards
- Can do 100% inspection
- Are in par with CMM’s on accuracy
- Are not laborious or time consuming
- Can stop the system from producing defective parts
- Process can be centered
- Processes can be trended
- Can work in tandem with SPC packages
- Can be analyzed real time or studied offline
- Can also have analysis tools built in
- Involve the user in improving the system
- Inexpensive
- Compact
- Scaleable
April 22, 2010
dancrissco
Towards A More Interesting Journey Through Life 
2 responses to “Machine Vision Inspection – A boon for Kaizen, Six Sigma & DFSS”
B Grey
April 23rd, 2010 at 12:38
Your point that machine vision can support six sigma and kaizen activities is a good one but I would like to pint out a couple of minor errors in your post.
First, machine vision systems are seldom “real time”, especially when implemented on a Windows platform.
Second, machine is not typically as accurate as a CMM. The problem boils down to resolution and field of view: the more pixels you can apply to small area the higher the resolution and possible accuracy but you do run into lens limitations.
To learn more, check out my blog: http://machinevision4users.blogspot.com/
dancrissco
May 7th, 2010 at 05:24
I do agree to both of your comments.
Thanks for bringing those up as they are extremely good points in risk assessment of systems and allowable tolerances.