Web-enabled, Real-time, Quality Assurance for Machining Production Systems

In order to maintain the close control of production quality, frequent measurement and process parameter adjustments are desirable. In the discrete parts industry, part inspection is intended to be a metric for the process quality but quality control is typically done long after the part has been machined. The long latency between machining and quality assessment makes it difficult to incorporate quality feedback into production. Quality assurance relies on continuous real–time quality feedback, which is not a complex concept. However, the collection and representation of the necessary process data and quality measurement data is challenging. This paper discusses Web-enabled, real-time quality data and statistics based on the integration of two manufacturing open specifications: MTConnect and Quality Measurement Results (QMResults). A pilot implementation that integrates the two technologies and produces Web-enabled, real-time quality results in a standard XML representation from Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine tool inspections will be discussed.