Enhancing rubber component reliability by response model
Product reliability, which is a dynamic quality characteristic, meaning that it is a function of time, is a determinant of manufacturer competitiveness. Multiple quality characteristics must be simultaneously considered in improving product reliability, because of these quality characteristics exhibiting a high correlation with product reliability. Therefore, enhancing the static quality characteristic of a product is essential for improving product reliability, particularly for formulating rubber components. For example, improving the reliability of oil seal components requires first simultaneously optimizing multiple quality characteristics, including hardness, tensile strength, and elongation, and so on. The subsequent reliability test is performed once these quality characteristics meet or exceed their specifications. This study primarily aims to improve the reliability of rubber components accounting for six-sigma quality level via the response model. The influences of noise factors are considered in experiment planning, and the effects of magnitude of process shift are involved in the optimization procedure to obtain a robust static quality characteristic and thus upgrade the reliability of rubber components. An experiment involving the formulation of oil seal demonstrates the effectiveness of this study. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
reliability optimization six-sigma parameter design multi-response problem