Nathalie Baudet

Gage R2&E2: an effective tool to improve the visual control of products

Purpose – The variability of the results of a visual control is often high. This paper aims to propose a new tool to give information about what improvement actions can be carried out to reduce this variability.Design/methodology/approach – The variability of a visual control can be measured by Kappas Fleiss which measures the level of agreement between appraisers and experts. The R&R Gage is then classically used to give information about corrective actions which can be carried out in order to improve this level of agreement. The paper demonstrated that this information is not always sufficient.Findings – By considering the two essential steps of a visual control (exploration and evaluation), the R2&E2 Gage proposed gives more precise information about the improvement actions to carry out to reduce the variability of a visual control. Repeatability and reproducibility, for detection and evaluation purposes, are considered separately.Research limitations/implications – This R2&E2 gage is one result of a ...

Toward a better visual inspection of products

Purpose – Visual inspection is used to assess a product’s quantitative characteristics (physical inspection) and/or to assess a product’s qualitative characteristics (sensory inspection). Due to the complexity of the product, inspection tasks are often performed by humans and are therefore prone to errors. It is particularly the case when controllers have to detect aesthetic anomalies, to evaluate them and decide if a product must be rejected or not. The purpose of this paper is to detail how to improve visual inspection. Design/methodology/approach – This paper details how the performance of visual inspection can be measured. It then lists the actions which can be carried out to improve the detection and the evaluation of aesthetic anomalies. Finally, it describes how can be made the knowledge about visual inspection more explicit in order to be shared by controllers. The methods the authors propose are illustrated with a concrete example detailed throughout the paper. Findings – The gage R2 & E2 the aut...