Introduction:

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, in concert with the Integrated Manufacturing Technology Initiative, hosted a workshop on First Part Correct (FPC) on April 4-6 at the NIST facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland.  As companies across America and around the world face up to the challenge of increased productivity and efficiency, getting the product right the first time is gaining support as a critical success metric.  Much of the focus is under the banner of Lean manufacturing, where getting rid of waste and eliminating mistakes are key success tenets.  The topic of FPC deserves our focus.

The workshop brought together approximately 50 representatives from manufacturing companies, technology suppliers, researchers, and academia.  While not a “closed” session, participation was by invitation only in order to assure the right mix of perspectives.  The topic is broad and cannot be easily and quickly addressed.  Therefore, this workshop was an exploratory session with the major objectives of creating a common understanding and of identifying critical topics that require further study as candidates for cooperative R&D activity.

The Business Case for FPC

While the business case for FPC was explored more fully at the workshop, these are some facts that presented to set the stage:

ü     75% of the items manufactured in the United States, based on value, are made in batches of 50 or less.  [1]

ü     The Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT) roadmaps identify doubling or tripling of machine value added time as a key goal – enabled by a FPC strategy.

ü     Experts gathered at a workshop at Sandia National Laboratory in 1998 agreed that 30 to 50% of product costs is invested in getting the first part correct.

ü     Time to market is a critical success factor, and product and process development drives this process

ü     As progressive companies transition to science-based design to manufacturing, FPC strategies will become stronger success discriminators.

 

Definition:

FPC is not an exact term with a commonly accepted definition.  For example, FPC is sometimes used to describe:

1. The creation of a product from raw material, which accurately represents the product that is needed, the first time and every time.
2. The smooth transition from product development to production so that there is no interruption in the flow from the design process to the first production units (first PRODUCTION part correct – eliminate prove-out parts).
3. The ability to produce production parts that are correct as delivered from the processing equipment and require no rework (first OPERATION produces useful product).

As a foundation for this workshop, FPC was defined as the ability to transition from design concept to a finished product with absolute certainty of a correctly produced part or product.  Emphasis is on the ability to produce the first product correctly and to transition from one to many without interruption.

Workshop Objective

The objective of this workshop was to start a process that will result in cooperative efforts to better achieve FPC capabilities.  The first workshop was an exploratory session and may be followed by more detailed activities.  The process of exploration had several objectives and process steps including:

1. To gain and document a consensus understanding of the FPC concept.
2. To identify benchmarks of the best state of practice and to define deficiencies (barriers) that must be overcome.
3. To create a framework or functional model that captures the span of activities that must be addressed.
4. To establish a vision of a business-driven future state for FPC
5. To define R&D goals that support the vision.
6. To prioritize the most compelling goals as targets for cooperative R&D effort.
7. To identify cooperative projects that will address the top priority needs and to seek ownership and leadership in working together to deliver solutions.

Background

Trial-and-error product and process design is a very expensive and time-consuming fact of life in today’s manufacturing environment.  However, we are fast approaching the point where the capability to transform customer needs into finished product will not require prove-out parts, destructive testing of physical prototypes or formal certification of first production units.  Advances in materials science, modeling and simulation, engineering tools, flexible and intelligent manufacturing processes and equipment, and information technology are transforming the vision of virtual prototyping – performing all design, testing, and product and process refinement with computing tools – into reality.

The ability to go from concept to finished product with absolute certainty of a correctly produced product will dramatically reduce costs, set new levels of customer satisfaction, and establish new success criteria for manufacturing enterprises.  There are instances of isolated best practices that are enabling companies to make great strides towards FPC.  Successes are being achieved by a combination of workforce empowerment, business process reengineering, and technology implementation.  While all factors will be considered in this workshop, the major emphasis will be on technologies that support FPC success.

A FPC strategy must embrace the complete product realization cycle.  The ability to produce the parts and the performance of the product, is determined in the product design, so design for manufacturability and design for total performance are critical.  The performance of the manufacturing process – the ability to produce the product – is determined to a large extent during process development and process design. Therefore, stable, predictable processes, with physics-based models relating process parameters to product characteristics, are imperative.  Also critical is the ability of the shop floor equipment to control the processes as designed and be able to compensate for variations in material, kinematics, dynamics, thermal, and other factors.  In the execution of the processes, the parameters must be controlled to assure that the process that is executed is always the right process to produce the right product.  Finally, for the product to be “correct” it must be correct for the long term.  Life-cycle considerations must be included.

Scope

The real objective is first and every part and product correct - no matter what that product is or whether “every product” is one or a million.  While it is important to remember the scope of the challenge, it is also mandatory to establish reasonable boundaries to effectively address the issues.  For the purpose of this workshop, we will focus on the process of changing raw material into an object made to specification – a discrete part.  It is our desire that this workshop is only the first of a series of activities that will address manufacturing technology issues across the spectrum of products and processes.

Advances in many technologies will be needed to achieve FPC.  To help structure the workshop, the topic will be loosely divided into the three areas shown in the figure below, recognizing that there is considerable overlap and interaction between the areas and that the boundaries are not well defined.

 

Deliverables from the workshop:

IMTI will document the proceedings from the workshop in a document similar to the technology roadmaps of the Integrated Manufacturing Technology Roadmapping (IMTR) project.  Since this was an exploratory workshop, the documents will be at a higher level than the IMTR roadmaps.  However, it is anticipated that topics will be defined and synergy identified to justify (and demand) that detailed roadmaps be produced to address critical need areas.  You can access the IMTR roadmaps at http://www.IMTI21.org.

Summary:

The FPC workshop provided a great opportunity for invested stakeholders to come together to discuss this very important topic, to determine what needs to be done about it, and to set in motion a process that will ultimately deliver solutions.  The challenge is clear.  To meet the challenge we will:

ü     Identify what capabilities now exist to support FPC, and identify the voids

ü     Refine the vision of FPC to assure that it is clear and has consensus

ü     Clearly communicate the path to the vision in terms of new technology goals

ü     Facilitate the creation of a voluntary partnership of invested partners dedicated to realizing the vision.

We invite you to be part of this exciting activity.