Improvement of the production process of leachedoptical fibers in a technological and organizationalcontext

摘要

Many contemporary products are relatively small-volume high-value added items whichare generally produced in batch production processes. These types of processes arebecoming more and more important as markets change quickly and require markets toadapt. Batch-wise production provides the necessary flexibility to respond to thesechanges. This research project focuses upon complex batch processes with high qualitydemands which are hard to meet.The production of leached optical fibers at SCHOTT North America Inc (SCHOTT) isexamined to identify, apply and test a method which is generally applicable forimproving and stabilizing the yield of complex batch processes. The fibers produced atSCHOTT are used in health care and must satisfy strict quality requirements. The yieldof fibers meeting the quality standards varies greatly and it is unknown which factorsdetermine the yield and the extent of their influence. The company-dedicated goal ofthis research was to assist the plant of SCHOTT in implementing and executing aquality improvement process. Existing literature offers little support to theorganizational aspect of quality improvement trajectories. Therefore specific attention ispaid to the organizational consequences of implementing an improvement process.In this research, response surface methodology is successfully applied to identify causalrelationships between factors that impact production process performance and the yield.The optimal settings of these factors are then defined through the use of a regressionmodel. The regression model that is used incorporates the factors of influence onproduct quality and their relative importance to the production of leached optical fibersat SCHOTT. The same technique can be applied to other production processes. Lastly,an implementation plan is defined to guide organizations towards successfulimplementation of improvement measures. In order to successfully execute this qualityimprovement trajectory, a guideline for managing such processes is proposed andapplied.