A Method of Collaborative Inspection Planning by Integrating a Production Planning System

摘要

Quality improvement activities have been promoted not only in the inspection sector but also in other sectors such as the production sector with the aim of zero defects under the concept of TQC/TQM. Besides improving quality, quality improvement activities contribute to the improvement of the capabilities of manufacturers to deliver at a lower cost. However, because of the increasing severity of global competition, manufacturers face increased pressure to reduce costs, shorten due dates, and increase quality requirements. Thus, these days, the production sector tends to design the production plan with less slack time to reduce production cost and in-process times. As a result, the flexibility of making the inspection plan by the inspection sector is reduced, which may increase the chance for internal and external failures. In this paper, we propose a method of collaborative inspection planning that integrates the inspection plan with the production plan in the production sector. In the method, slack times are intentionally inserted in the production plan, and inspection levels are selected for the inspection plan by the collaborative efforts in consideration of production cost, due dates, and internal and external failure costs. The method generates the strategy map that shows the expected profit based on the possible combinations of the slack times and the inspection levels. The combinations that maximize the expected profit are selected by using the strategy map, and the inspection plan is made based on the inspection levels. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through numerical experiments using a simple manufacturing model.