Quality Management: Expert Systems to support Production Decisions

The paper deals with Quality Management in make to order firms. These firms have a particular strong necessity to estimate, as far as possible, the precise number of items which will be defective in order to correctly size the quantities which are to be produced. In fact, if the produced quantities are greater than the client domand, stock of unsold products (with full cost) will result. On the other hand, if the produced quantities are inferior to client demand, the customer will not be satisfacted within the required delivery dates. Both cases cause economic disadvantages. In order to carry out the above mentioned estimation, modern methods of quality analysis are utilised. These give more emphasis to the study of the causes of defectiveness rather than to the application of post production control. Therefore a general model based on cause - effect relationships is proposed in order to tackle the problem. The model is then utilized to realize an E.S. which estimates defectiveness. This E.S. is tested in a firm with high product variability.