Creating Data Collections

The Bike Company maintains high-quality standards. Therefore, during the manufacturing of bicycles, they collect data to control the production process and ensure traceability. For instance, shop floor personnel collect the torque range value during the assembly process and the tire pressure during the final inspection. This data collection enables monitoring to ensure that the production process meets the required quality. By collecting data, it becomes possible to perform statistical analysis, such as statistical process control (SPC).

In SAP Digital Manufacturing, the data collection (DC) functionality gives you the ability to define data parameters for collection, and specify when and how to collect them. The shop floor operator collects parametric data through the production operator dashboard (POD). Besides, the shop floor equipment can also collect parametric data at a specific point during the manufacturing process. You can gather data at materials, operations, routing steps, and resources. The data that is collected can be used for the following purposes:

• Gathering additional information about the product that is being produced.
• Monitoring the manufacturing process to assure quality.
• Solving quality control problems related to specific materials.

The data to be collected is defined through a data collection group. The data collection group is an identifier used to list the data parameters. Grouping gives you the ability to attach a group of related data parameters to multiple criteria, such as operations and resources. Grouping allows that you only have to define the data that you want to collect once.

A data collection group has one or more parameters. A parameter is a particular attribute or type of information to be collected in a data collection.

After having defined the data collection group and parameters, as well as when and how to collect the data, comes the data collection process. Data collection is the process of collecting information about a material, resource, or SFC number. The collected information can either be numeric or textual, and is gathered at a defined data collection point.

While the SFC moves through the individual production operations, the shop floor operators can collect DC parameters using a POD plugin. The DC parameters are stored regarding the manufactured SFC.

In the Bike Company, when the shop floor operator is assembling the bicycle, a data collection group appears to collect information about the torque range. It has two parameters: the torque tool ID and the torque range value. During final inspection, the worker must collect inspection-related information, for example tire pressure, and the overall inspection result.

Data collection groups are maintained in the Manage data collection application. Each data collection group when defined can have one of the following statuses:

• Releasable: Users can use the data collection group without any restriction. The data collection group appears during data collection.
• New: Users cannot use this data collection group, but they can change the record. It does not appear during data collection.
• Hold: Users cannot use this data collection group. This status is temporary. Users can change the status of this record. A data collection group with a status of Hold does not appear during data collection.
• Obsolete: Users cannot use this data collection group. This data collection group is no longer used. It does not appear during data collection.

You can add one or more parameters do the data collection group. You can configure the following properties:

• Type: The type of information to be collected. It can be text, numeric or boolean.
• Data Collection Prompt: The prompt that the production operator will see in the POD when entering data parameter values.
• Minimum Value (only for numeric values): The minimum value that an operator can save during the data collection. If blank, no minimum value restriction is placed on the data collected.
• Maximum Value (only for numeric values): The maximum value that an operator can save during the data collection. If blank, no maximum value restriction is placed on the data collected.
• Target Value (only for numeric values): The value of the numeric parameter from which the actual collected value must deviate as little as possible.
• Override Min/Max Value (only for numeric values): If set to Yes, allows operators to save values that are beyond the range of the values defined in the Minimum Value and Maximum Value fields. This allows to document deviations.
• Auto Log NC on Min/Max Override (only for numeric values): If set to Yes, the system automatically logs a specified NC code against an SFC when the entered value for this data parameter is outside the maximum and minimum limits. This field is visible only if the Override Min/Max Value is set to Yes.
• Nonconformance Code (only for numeric values): The nonconformance code that the system automatically logs against an SFC when the entered value for this data parameter is outside the maximum and minimum limits. This field is visible only if Auto Log NC on Min/Max Override is set to Yes.
• Required: If set to yes, the shop floor operator has to collect data for this parameter.
• Required Data Entries: Number of mandatory data entries.
• True/False value (only for boolean values): The value that corresponds to true and false, for example accepted and rejected, or high and low, respectively.

In this example, the torque ID parameter has the type defined as text and the torque range value has the type defined as numeric. For the torque range value, it is important to ensure that the value falls within the range that meets the quality standards. Therefore, we define both the minimum and maximum values.

The assignment specifies when the shop floor operator needs to collect data. This can be assigned to various elements such as material/version, routing/version, and operation activity master. During production, the system identifies the relevant data collection groups for each step and displays them accordingly. For example, the Assembly data collection group is only shown during the assembly step, while the Final Inspection data collection group appears during the final inspection step. A data collection group linked to the manufactured material is displayed in all steps.