Quality Control Inspection Research Articles

Electronic Toll Collection System Engineering Quality Inspection Evaluation and Control Method

Electronic toll collection (ETC) system has been developed and applied in most provinces of China, but the quality inspection and evaluation standard for ETC system doesn’t exist. According to the current situation of ETC system application in most provinces, in order to improve the efficiency and operation stability of ETC system, the quality inspection evaluation and control scheme for ETC system was studied in this paper, based on two Chinese national standards GB/T20851-2007 on ETC dedicated short range communication series standards and JTG F80/2 on quality inspection and evaluation standards for highway engineering. Quality assessment test were summarized into several items in checklists and the key items were put forward. Then the comprehensive method of evaluation and quality inspection control for ETC system was present.

Fundamental Project Quality Assurance Organizations in Highway Design and Construction

Alternative project delivery methods and reductions in state highway agency staffing are changing project quality assurance organizations (QAO) or the assignment of project quality management roles and responsibilities in the industry. Although fundamental quality roles and responsibilities remain the same, the assignment of these roles and responsibilities is shifting away from agencies and is doing so in an ad hoc manner because of project time constraints and lack of research and guidance on the topic. Most research that pertains to highway project quality has focused on quality control levels, material specifications, inspections, and observations; there is a gap in the research about overall project quality organizations. This paper addresses that gap by providing a better understanding of highway project QAOs and guidance about assignments of quality management roles and responsibilities. The research identified five fundamental highway project QAOs through a national survey of industry, a literature review, and an analysis of the content of documents from 66 projects. The resulting five fundamental highway project QAOs are Deterministic, Assurance, Variable, Oversight, and Acceptance.

Quality Control Concepts in the Manufacture of Masonry Blocks for Building Project Delivery

This research work was undertaken to assess the application of quality control concepts in the production of masonry blocks for building projects in Imo State, Nigeria. The study was embarked upon in order to examine the different types of masonry blocks produced in the state, and to assess the level of quality control concepts applied in their production processes, using selected block industries in Owerri Municipality. The study also was aimed at finding out the educational qualifications of the workers at those block industries. The research was an attempt to search for answers to the problem of building and infrastructural collapse that has become rampant in Nigeria recently. Data for the research was collected through the views of the staff and management of the case study block industries and data analysis which was carried out by the use of percentages and frequency tables and chi-square statistical tool, revealed that the problem of low quality masonry blocks used in building projects were due to several latent factors like time lag between mixing and placing of mix into mould; mould of placing mix into mould before compaction; type of cement; and inappropriate sand-cement-water mixture ratio. These things were found to have great and decisive effects on the ultimate strength and quality of the building blocks. The research also revealed that poor mixing of cement, sand and water, lack of quality control measures and low quality sand were responsible for low quality blocks in many block producing small and medium scale industries. This situation is contributing to building and infrastructural collapse. The study therefore recommends that quality control concepts should be applied in the production of masonry blocks. The use of acceptance sampling tests for all the raw materials used in masonry block production and application of control-chart for work-in-process should be adopted. The pre-process, in- process, and post-process inspections and testings must be carried out for the production and standardization of high- quality building blocks before the products are made available to the customer. In the block industry, the quality control methods used for inspection and testing for quality control are screening or 100% inspection, sampling or lot by lot inspection and process inspection. The application of quality control in the block industry should cover the whole production process right from the raw material stage to the finished product. The control areas should start with the control of raw materials, in process control, control of finished products, visual control and physical control which has to do with quality control tests. Proper control measures in the manufacturing process should result in the following:  Decrease in reject rate and increase in product quality.  Reduction in price of products hence better value for money.  Increase in product yield which should make economic mass production possible.  Reduction in production and distribution/delivery cost.  Good reputation for the industry and improved.

Optimal Product Quality of Supply Chain Based on Information Traceability in Fashion and Textiles Industry: An Adverse Logistics Perspective

This paper investigates and compares two quality control methods, that is, inspection control and traceability control, to optimize supply chain quality in fashion and textiles industry. The objective is to maximize the supply chain participants’ expected profits and to achieve a Pareto improvement of supply chain product quality. Withqualityas a controllable variable indicating the level of opportunistic behavior, thereturnis interpreted as a function ofquality: the higher the quality, the lower the return. Taking into account bothqualityandinventory quantity, we propose and compare the optimal decision-making models for three control methods of supply chain, respectively: decentralized (no control), inspection, and traceability. Further, we use a numerical example to illustrate the relationships amongquality,profits,andquality-control costcoefficients (i.e., inspection-related cost and traceability-related cost). We then analyze and discuss the differences in the applications and scopes of the two control methods. On the one hand, given the poor standardization of fashion and textiles industry in the current practice (especially in China market), the cost of sampling inspection is relatively lower as compared to that of the traceability control method. On the other hand, with the improved industrial standardization and technology, traceability control tends to gain increasing advantages in cost and popularity.

An application of multiple criteria decision-making techniques for ranking different national Iranian oil refining and distribution companies

Article history: Received May 14, 2012 Received in Revised form June, 26, 2012 Accepted 2 August 2012 Available online August 9 2012 Performance measurement plays an essential role on management of governmental agencies especially when profitability is not the primary concern and we need to consider other important factors than profitability such as customer satisfaction, etc. In this paper, we propose a multi-criteria decision making method to rank different national Iranian oil refining and distribution companies. The proposed study of this paper uses six factors including per capita supply, energy cost, physical productivity of labor, staff participation, quality control inspection of stations and education per capita. The proposed study uses Entropy to find the relative importance of each criterion and TOPSIS to rank 37 alternatives based on cities and three regions. The results of the implementation of our method indicate that central regions close to capital city of the country maintains the highest ranking (0.9122) while southern regions maintains the lowest comes in the lowest priority (0.0569) and the northern region is in the middle (0.7635). © 2012 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Development and Analytical Validation of Robust Near-Infrared Multivariate Calibration Models for the Quality Inspection Control of Mozzarella Cheese

This paper proposed and validated robust diffuse reflectance near-infrared methods for the direct determination of fat and moisture in cow mozzarella cheeses using partial least squares regression. They were developed under the realistic conditions of routine analysis in a state laboratory of quality inspection control and were used for analyzing a great variety of mozzarella samples manufactured by different manufacturing procedures and originating from the whole state of Minas Gerais, Brazil (more than 100 different producers). A robust methodology was implemented, including the detection of outliers and the harmonization of the multivariate concepts with the traditional univariate guidelines. The models were constructed in the ranges from 38.7 to 58.0 % w/w on dry basis for fat and from 41.5 to 55.1 % w/w for moisture, providing root mean square errors of prediction of 2.1 and 0.9 %, respectively. Both methods were validated through the estimation of figures of merit, such as linearity, trueness, precision, analytical sensitivity, ruggedness, bias, and residual prediction deviation. Once the methods were adopted, their performances were monitored for approximately 1 year through control charts and were considered satisfactorily stable with prediction errors within the established limits. Beyond these specific methods, it was also pursued to present a complete methodology for multivariate analytical validation, an important aspect for the implementation of near-infrared spectroscopy methods in the routine of food quality inspection.

Quality Control Inspection Program Counterstone of a High-Performance Project Organization

In order to ensure the quality of the works during construction stages, consistent with the overall project objectives, the Project Team shall prepare a document that established the scope and criteria that regulate the actions of professionals and companies involved in the pro - ject, following a well known and proven criteria for quality control and quality assurance. These are commonly included in Quality Control In -

Rapid analysis of cyclamate in foods and beverages by gas chromatography-electron capture detector (GC-ECD)

A rapid method for determination of sodium cyclamate in foods and beverages was developed. Sodium cyclamate was converted to N,N-dichloridecyclohexylamine by reaction with sodium hypochlorite under acid condition. N,N-dichloridecyclohexylamine was subsequently extracted by n-hexane and determined by gas chromatography. Conditions such as derivatization time, the concentration of sodium hypochlorite and sulphuric acid were optimised. Amino acids, aliphatic amines, and food additives such as preservatives, dyes and sweeteners showed no interference for quantification of cyclamate. The correlation coefficient of calibration curve was 0.9993 in the range of 5.0-250mg/L. The limits of detection (LOD) and limits of quantification (LOQ) were calculated as three or ten times the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N), respectively. The LOD and LOQ for yellow wine and fruit juice were 0.05 and 0.2mg/L, respectively. The LOD and LOQ for cake and preserved fruit were 0.25 and 0.8mg/kg, respectively. The intra-day and inter-day RSD were 0.28% and 1.1% (n=5), respectively. The method was successfully applied for determination of cyclamate in yellow wine, cake, fruit juice and preserved fruit. This method was simple, fast, and sensitive. It was suitable for the determination of cyclamate in foods and beverages for safety and quality control inspections.

Centralized quality control inspections for blood bags and leukocyte reduction at the Japanese Red Cross Society

The Japanese Red Cross is now emphasizing an intense quality control procedure for testing blood bags and for leukocyte counts in blood components. The inspections and tests are described and the effects and significance these have on blood product management of the supply of safe blood are presented.

Automated surface micro flaw inspection for quality control of electronic chips

This research proposes a new approach that applies discrete cosine transform (DCT) based enhancement for the detection of micro flaws on electronic chips. A two-stage decomposition procedure is proposed to extract an odd-odd frequency matrix after a digital image has been transformed to DCT domain. The cumulative sum algorithm is then applied to detect the transition points of the gentle curves plotted from the odd-odd frequency matrix. After the transition points are determined, the proper radius of the cutting sector is computed and the high-pass filtering operation can be performed. The filtered image is then transformed back to the spatial domain. Thus, this study effectively attenuates the global random texture pattern and accentuates only micro flaws in the restored image. Finally, the restored image is segmented by an entropy method and some features of the detected flaws are extracted. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves a high 96.24% probability of correctly discriminating micro flaws from normal regions and a low 0.15% probability of erroneously detecting normal regions as defects on random textured surfaces of electronic chips. Key words: Industrial engineering, surface micro flaw inspection, electronic chips, quality control, machine vision.

Pinhole detection in steel slab images using Gabor filter and morphological features

Presently, product inspection for quality control is becoming an important part in the steel manufacturing industry. In this paper, we propose a vision-based method for detection of pinholes in the surface of scarfed slabs. The pinhole is a very tiny defect that is 1-5 mm in diameter. Because the brightness in the surface of a scarfed slab is not uniform and the size of a pinhole is small, it is difficult to detect pinholes. To overcome the above-mentioned difficulties, we propose a new defect detection algorithm using a Gabor filter and morphological features. The Gabor filter was used to extract defective candidates. The morphological features are used to identify the pinholes among the defective candidates. Finally, the experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is effective to detect pinholes in the surface of the scarfed slab.

Molecular Mechanism of Protein Folding in the Cell

F.-Ulrich Hartl and Arthur Horwich will share this year's Lasker Basic Medical Science Award for the discovery of the cell's protein-folding machinery, exemplified by cage-like structures that convert newly synthesized proteins into their biologically active forms. Their fundamental findings reveal mechanisms that operate in normal physiologic processes and help to explain the problems that arise in diseases of protein folding.

A fatigue reliability analysis method including super long life regime

An affordable and feasible method with moderate accuracy is developed to realize fatigue reliability assessment and life prediction including super long life regime (SLLR) through series of experimental researches on a railway axle steel and real axles. A competition damage mechanism for fatigue crack initiation and growth in SLLR is revealed to fascinate an understanding on wide fatigue damage behavior and to provide a weigh and balance on material primary quality control and on-line inspection capacity. Affordable material probabilistic strength–life ( S– N) curves including SLLR are presented by an extrapolation approach on a concurrent probability rule between the S– N relations in mid-long life regime and the fatigue limits with a specified life definition. And then, structural probabilistic S– N curves are deduced by considering scale-induced effect on the material curves. Random cyclic stress–strain (CSS) relations are depicted for constructing structural random stressing history. Reliability assessment and fatigue life prediction are conducted by an interference model of the applied stress deduced from the random CSS relations and the strength capacity derived from the structural probabilistic S– N curves. Availability and feasibility of the present method are indicated by a successful application on a railway axle steel.

Biomedical applications of a real-time terahertz color scanner

A real-time THz color scanner has the potential to further expand the application scope of THz spectral imaging based on its rapid image acquisition rate. We demonstrated three possible applications of a THz color scanner in the biomedical field: imaging of pharmaceutical tablets, human teeth, and human hair. The first application showed the scanner’s potential in total inspection for rapid quality control of pharmaceutical tablets moving on a conveyor belt. The second application demonstrated that the scanner can be used to identify a potential indicator for crystallinity of dental tissue. In the third application, the scanner was successfully used to visualize the drying process of wet hairs. These demonstrations indicated the high potential of the THz color scanner for practical applications in the biomedical field.

Medical waste management in the hospital

Enhanced management of the entire process of medical wastes, ranging from sorting collection, delivery, transport to temporary storage: compilation of the computerized management system for medical wastes: development of quality control inspection standards for medical wastes: all-staff training for the awareness of legal compliance for medical wastes, prevention of medical wastes from jeopardizing both human being and the environment. Key words: Medical wastes; Hospital infection management

Developing a precast production management system using RFID technology

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is characterized with superior predispositions, including the recognition of multiple markers, communication ranges from five to six meters, and a storage database for thousands of data files. These unique features resolve data storage and record-reviewing difficulties, prevent repetitive data entries, and facilitate instant feedbacks. The precast industry is a management-intensive sector, for which pivotal issues include methods relevant to the instant provision of acquired management information to executive managers, materials of precast concrete products, quality control inspection and inventory and transportation management information, and convenient data entry for frontline personnel. It is anticipated to integrate usage of Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and the application of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Using RFID tag and reader to collect the information, and then transmit the multi-faceted, mobilized information such as the production quantity, the materials quantity, quality control inspection and inventory and transportation management information to the manager office or the site worker via the PDA and wireless Internet. This precast production management system which has been developed by the author and utilized in precast production management encompasses inspection of incoming materials, production process inspection, molds inspection, specimen strength feedback, and logistic and receiving management. The mobilized information frame elaborated in this proposal can, to certain degree, be regarded as a reference for the construction of a mobilized precast industry management system.

Quality inspection scheduling for multi-unit service enterprises

The traveling salesman problem is a classic NP-hard problem used to model many production and scheduling problems. The problem becomes even more difficult when additional salesmen are added to create a multiple traveling salesman problem (MTSP). We consider a variation of this problem where one salesman visits a given set of cities in a series of short trips. This variation is faced by numerous franchise companies that use quality control inspectors to ensure properties are maintaining acceptable facility and service levels. We model an actual franchised hotel chain using traveling quality inspectors to demonstrate the technique. The model is solved using a commercially available genetic algorithm (GA) tool as well as a custom GA program. The custom GA is proven to be an effective method of solving the proposed model.

Impact of Inspected Buffers on Production Parameters of Construction Processes

This paper examines the production implications of quality control inspections conducted on the buffer between processes in a construction project by modeling the linkage between these processes. Inspection of partially completed work at the end of one activity but before the beginning of work by the next activity is fairly common. Work that is deemed to be of sufficient quality is then made available for the next activity. Work that is deemed insufficient requires rework, typically by the trade appropriate to the activity that fed into the buffer, to bring the work into compliance. This has implications for workload management for that trade, of course, as well as for the reliability of work flow to the successor or downstream processes. While such situations are common in all construction sectors, an example from the residential construction sector was examined via a simulation model augmented by field data collected from residential construction projects. The impacts of the work flow into the predecessor process, the inspection pass rate, and resource availability were examined. The inspection pass rate was found to dramatically affect the reliability of work flow, unless resources are unlimited. Furthermore, the inspection pass rate was found to be functionally related to the production parameters of the process.

Overview of surface registration techniques including loop minimization for three-dimensional modeling and visual inspection

3D modeling is an important topic concerning visual inspection in automatic quality control. Through visual inspection, it is possible to determine whether a product fulfills the required specifications or whether it contains surface or volume imperfections. Although some processes such as color analysis can be achieved by 2D techniques, more challenging tasks such as volume inspection of large and complex objects/scenes may require the use of accurate 3D registration techniques. 3D simultaneous localization and mapping has become a very important research topic not only in the robotics field for solving problems such as robot navigation and mapping of 2D/3D scenarios but also in the computer vision community for the estimation of the camera pose and the registration of large-scale objects. Although their techniques differ slightly depending on the application, both communities tend to solve similar problems by means of different approaches. We present a survey of the techniques used by the robotics and computer vision communities, pointing out the pros and cons and potential applications of each approach. Furthermore, the most representative techniques have been programmed and tested, obtaining experimental results that provide an accurate comparison of the methods in the presence of noise and outliers.

X-ray detection of defects and contaminants in the food industry

The ability of X-rays to traverse through matter and reveal hidden contaminants or defects has led to their extensive use in manufacturing industries for quality control inspection. The difficulties inherent in the detection of defects and contaminants in food products have kept the use of X-ray in that industry limited mainly to the packaged foods sector. Nevertheless, the need for non-destructive internal product inspection has motivated a considerable research effort in this field spanning many decades. Improvements in technology, especially more compact and affordable high voltage power sources, high speed computing, and high resolution detector arrays, have made many X-ray detection tasks possible today that were previously unfeasible. These improvements can be expected to continue into the future. The purpose of this article is to give a review of research activity related to the use of X-ray imaging for the detection of defects and contaminants in agricultural commodities and discuss improvements in technology required to improve these detection capabilities.