Development of an online quality information system for e‐manufacturing

In an e‐manufacturing environment, the acquisition of real time quality data and information is paramount for distributed collaborative manufacturers to make quick and correct actions towards quality problems in a manufacturing process. This paper attempts to assist manufacturers in obtaining such data and information and further to make decisions regarding quality control.

In this paper, an online quality information system (OQIS) for quality control in an e‐manufacturing environment is presented. The common object request broker architecture standards and client‐server technologies are applied to obtain real time data and information whenever required at different locations. In addition, several modules, responsible for product design, process planning, quality control and data input, are developed within a coherent OQIS information model.

Preliminary results show advantages of the OQIS for companies to obtain real time quality data and information. It can also suggest possible improvements pertaining to quality control towards e‐manufacturing.

The proposed OQIS can be further developed to solve such issues as explanation of complex quality information and deployment costs in the enterprise. Further research should be directed to the evolution of OQIS.

The OQIS can provide consistent quality data and information, based on which manufacturers can make timely and correct decisions in solving quality problems in an e‐manufacturing environment.