Small Company Process Enhancement

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ISRU
Industrial Statistics Research Unit

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INDUSTRIAL STATISTICS RESEARCH UNIT
We are part of Newcastle University, Department
of Mechanical, Material and Manufacturing
Engineering based in the in the Stephenson
Building.
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WHAT DO ISRU DO?
Mission Statement "To promote the effective
and widespread use of statistical methods
throughout European industry and to use the ideas
and experience so gained for the benefit of
students and the wider academic community."
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THE WORK ISRU DOES CAN BE BROKEN DOWN INTO 3 MAIN
CATEGORIES

• Consultancy
• Training
• Major Research Projects

All with the common goal of promoting quality
improvement by implementing statistical techniques
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Typical UK or Regional projects

• Assessment of environmental risks in chemical and
  process industries
• Introduction of statistical process control (SPC)
  in micro-electronics company
• Help to develop a new catheter for open-heart
  surgery via designed experiments (DoE)

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Typical UK Food Projects

• Waffle Manufacturer
• Bakery - Biscuits
• Bakery - Shortbread
• Butter Manufacture
• Soft-Drinks Bottling Plant
• Crisp Manufacturer
• Tea Blender
• Cheese Maker

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Typical UK Food Projects

• Involved in development of Quorn
• One other large company -
• Helped reduce waste on a production line
• The company changed its name
• Used to be called Rowntrees

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Some past successes

• Manufacturing Down-time cut by 40
• Production Waste reduced by 50
• Lead times reduced from 6 to 3 weeks
• Stock holding levels halved
• Material use optimised saving 150k pa
• Expensive equipment shown to be unnecessary in a
  new process

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Other Benefits

• Better monitoring of processes
• Better involvement of people
• Staff morale is raised
• Waste is reduced
• Throughput is increased
• Profits go up

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Tools of the trade

• Measurement
• Logical problem solving
• Data analysis
• Process capability
• SPC, TQM, DoE
• Empowered team formation
• etc

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Voice of the Customer
Concept of assessing customer wishes and giving
them what they want Links suppliers and customers
in supply chain Becomes easier to make better
products and protects market
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EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Taguchi

• What can it do for companies?

Minimise cost Maximise output More information
than otherwise
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Teaching Company Schemes
Key UK Government sponsored Technology Transfer
Mechanism

• Government sponsored up to 70
• for graduate on substantial project
• over 2 years working at the Company
• with academic supervision from partner University
• We employ the graduate

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ISRU have had TCS with

• Amersham International
• Boots
• Wavin Industrial Products
• ICI Quality Award
• Food for Thought
• Villa Soft Drinks
• RR Donnelley
• Glaxo Best Practice Award

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European Research Projects

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Fatigue Crack Growth Rate in Steel Rails
6 Labs mostly major European Steel producers Two
stages - Fractional design - material
constraints New way of determining stages of
crack growth based upon plots of moving average
of MSE through a derived curve New European
Standard First time that a balanced Factorial
array has been embedded in EC research contract?!
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Transient Pressures
Safety of water and sewage systems Pressure
Hammer - Dangerous 6 partners - great interest
throughout World Large rigs in Italy and Holland
- The Watterloop - filling in the Zieder - Zee
Petrochemical Industry applications Safety
(risks) Model Experimental Design - Uncertainty
in constants largely unknown!
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Firemens Boots
Safety Standards for footwear Many Partners -
mostly in Scandinavia Questionnaire for
Firemen Several experiments now
designed Eventually - Trial of new standards Side
issue - advice on stats aspects other standards -
Huge scatter - simple ANOVA can solve - standards
need urgent repair USA standards also have flaws
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CIS II
Find the hidden patterns in survey data 75000
responses from round EC ISRU approach - Screen
then Model Data Mining - The usual suspects - FA
/ PCA - Regression - C-Correlations - GAs Much
interest in Europe about Innovation WE may be
leading the field in this?
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Sensory Analysis of Butter
First ever international intercomparison on
sensory analysis in the Dairy industry 9 Labs
throughout Europe e.g. Lurpak - French Food
Safety Agency - 11 partners 4 stages - 4
experimental designs Sampling Protocol
-Fractional Factorial Used DoE - Compared to
ANOVA - this is best way see - Avery and Masters
1999
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Recent Projects
EC 5th Framework - Competitive Growth - Water
Quality - CRM - Public health office - Microbes -
Industrial Experimental Design EC- Standards
Measurement and testing- Sensory Analysis for
Food Packaging Materials and Taste taints EC
Standards - Cyclic Oxidisation Testing
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Recent Projects
Thematic Network on Industrial Statistics 30
Partners across Europe To push forward use of
statistics in Business and Industry
Pro-Enbis Thematic Net on Water Surges 20
partners to investigate the effects of Waterhammer