DMAIC stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. And if your organization participates in 6S, Lean, or any other formal process improvement initiative, it’s a term you’ve probably heard of.
Each word in the DMAIC acronym refers to a phase in a complete quality improvement process. In the Define phase, an opportunity for improvement or problem to solve is identified. Measuring involves using data gathering tools to get real information related to the problem. Analysis covers tasks like root cause analysis or FEMA, and it requires a deep dive into the collected data in search of things like programming errors or bad base frames. The next step is improvement: where the cause of the problem is eliminated. Last is the Control phase, which means creating a plan to keep the improved state running, and utilizing tools or new systems to monitor the processes affected. It also means making sure all employees are involved in maintenance activities, including finding ways to make errors either impossible or easy to detect immediately.
When DMAIC is executed properly–especially in a heavily automated environment like an automotive body shop–it’s a valuable framework for continuous improvement, and successfully implementing it is a path to delivering higher quality products with less money and time spent.
But as with any quality system, DMAIC requires the right tools for the job. Tools for data handling are especially important: Data is required for every step in the process, particularly during the measuring and analysis phases. The amount of data generated and used by industrial robots is tremendous, so just locating accurate or relevant data for a specific problem is a challenge that can take hours to resolve—before the fix even begins. Adding on to the complexity is the fact that touch-ups, optimization, and planned changes often mean that even if data can be found, it may be out of date.
In addition to challenges in accessibility, analysis of robotic data is also difficult. Few tools exist to help everyday employees with analyzing data at the volume and complexity as exists in the body shop. Even a single car model can include dozens of variants, hundreds of robots, and tens of thousands of process points. Armed with only spreadsheets or handmade in-house tools, performing RCA is prohibitively time consuming. And when even after problems are identified and corrected, it can be challenging to verify a successful fix. Existing tools for interacting with robotic joining process data are rudimentary, and usually lack critical features like modern process visualization or automatic data aggregation. Control is the final step, but without proper automated systems and broad standards in place for handling data, there’s no way to monitor the situation or prevent another problem from arising.
A versatile DMAIC Solution:
RoboLive® Visual is a digitalization solution designed to aid in every step of the DMAIC process for manufacturers with gluing or welding robots. By providing a single automatic source of truth for all robot data, it provides you with the tools you need to facilitate advanced analysis and performance monitoring for all of your robotic systems.
RoboLive® Visual comes as an installable client custom-created from your nominal and actual process data. All process data and parameters are collected in a data table that can be searched, filtered, sorted, and exported. The data is also available as advanced process visualization on models of your parts.
No matter what design means in your DMAIC processes, RoboLive® Visual can help. During integration of new products, it can be used to track progress—and the RoboLive® Visual Client includes special tools for system integrators to assure quality at handover. If your Define stage involves identifying a defect or opportunity for improvement, you’ll need a tool to pick up the problem before it’s identified by spot checks. RoboLive® Visual creates automatic errors based on your own tolerances and standards, so all you need to do to identify a problem is take a glance at the status screen. Systemic errors or machine degradation can be picked up by the Coordinate Change Report included in all installations, which automatically generates a report of which processes are receiving the most changes. The production timeline is another tool for error definition: a single click on any two data sets will show what touch-ups or adjustments have been made to the programming.
Measurement and analysis are likewise simple with all the tools RoboLive® Visual offers. RoboLive® Visual is a valuable RCA tool, as problems are automatically highlighted in the visualization and all relevant data can be easily located with a search in the parameter table.
When an improvement or fix has been implemented, verifying the result is simple: RoboLive® Visual can receive regular updates with new robot data as often as every shift with update service options, so seeing visual confirmation and documentation of improvement is as simple as receiving a new data set.
Control means ensuring continuing success in the future, and RoboLive® Visual is a tool for this phase of DMAIC as well. Mistake proofing—ensuring that further similar errors either don’t occur or are easy to detect—is easy with RoboLive® Visual’s automatic error detection. Documentation is another important part of control, and RoboLive® Visual automatically creates a hands-free documentation of all changes compiled into a single source of truth. But perhaps the most valuable part of RoboLive® Visual is its ease of use and wide implementation. RoboLive® Visual can be installed on any computer (including line PCs), and all packages come with unlimited client licenses so that everyone in your plant can have access to the software. And because it’s the client is easy to use and intuitive, all plant staff are empowered to identify and take action on potential errors.
In conclusion:
DMAIC is a valuable problem solving framework—especially for large manufacturers. But without tools to automatically gather robotic joining process data, appropriate software for analysis, or a means to distribute the information to your entire team, DMAIC will be an uphill battle.
RoboLive® Visual provides you with a versatile solution that is usable throughout the DMAIC process, all for a low one-time payment. That’s why it’s an industry-leading software solution trusted by some of the largest names in automotive manufacturing. If you want to see RoboLive® Visual for yourself, free consultations our available for our engineers. Select clients may be eligible for a custom demo download containing real product data, so reach out today for more information.
