Warwick Analytics pioneers manufacturing fault finder software

The Six-Sigma approach is a business-management strategy that has been widely adopted in industry to improve the quality of products. It allows engineers to minimise variability in manufacturing processes and to identify and remove the causes of component defects. It aims to reduce manufacturing defects to 3.4 per million of any products manufactured.

But, despite rigorous adherence to such quality-control methods, systems built from such component parts can still fail under warranty once they are in the field and, when they do, customers return the products to a service centre or distributor where details of the fault are logged and service personnel attempt to discover the root cause of the failure.

However, in many cases, the fault experienced by the customer cannot be replicated at the service centre and the product that has been returned operates properly when tested. Such problems are labelled ’no defect found’ problems and, because they result in a new replacement product being sent to the customer under warranty, they can seriously erode the profit margins of manufacturers.