Development of an Information System for Deviation Handling of Products in Manufacturing

Abstract: Industries are heading towards implementing Industry 4.0 standards to increase their operational efficiency. Digital system integration and data-driven decision-making are some of the key areas to focus on in Industry 4.0. Therefore, an attempt has been made in this work to establish a digital tool for deviation handling of products in production that would encourage data-driven decision-making in the Continuous Improvement activities and improve traceability of the products by integrating several digital systems.  The digital tool for deviation handling was developed based on a Relational Database concept. The Relational Database was hosted on a SQL Server to support multiple active users at the same time. Besides logging information related to the product deviation, the digital tool also records information related to several actions carried out in an event of product deviation, for example, Root Cause Analysis, geometrical inspection, Rework, or Approval of non-conformity. Thus, integrating this information in the deviation handling system results in better system integration and improved traceability.  To assess the quality of the information collected by the deviation handling system, a literature review has been performed on widely used parameters to evaluate the quality of the information. Based on the parameters researched, the information quality of the data currently being collected by the deviation handling system is evaluated. Further, several methods to improve the information quality is suggested in this work.