Inspection planning is a crucial element of quality management, regulatory compliance, customer satisfaction and more — but it’s also a potentially challenging process. To overcome obstacles and streamline in-process inspections, your teams need a tool designed to meet industry standards.

DISCUS Software solutions help streamline, simplify and optimize the inspection process. From extracting model characteristics to finalizing First Article Inspection Reports (FAIRs), our products help you improve quality assurance and prevent costly, time-consuming delays simultaneously. The result is increased productivity for your teams and better outcomes for your clients.

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Breaking Down Inspection Planning

Inspection planning assesses production processes to identify and address quality control issues such as defects or deviations from the customer’s expectations. This is based on a specific inspection plan, or a set of procedures built to capture the right data from the right sources.

There are five categories of inspection plans, each defined by what it analyzes:

  • Receiving: Raw materials and components.
  • Resource: Shop floor equipment and its safety and functionality.
  • Inventory: Stored materials or parts.
  • Work in Progress: Various stages of the production process.
  • Asset: Large assets like manufacturing facilities and their regulatory compliance.

Inspection activities are crucial for ensuring operational efficiency and optimizing risk management. They’re also vital for protecting the company’s bottom line from costly delays, rework, missed regulatory requirements and more. Ultimately, the right inspection strategy can potentially mean the difference between a successful production run and a flawed one.

FAIs and TDPs

FAIs are a formalized quality control process used to analyze newly produced products. Often utilized on the first product or batch, manufacturers compile FAI inspection data in a FAIR to ensure the products meet safety requirements, industry standards and customer expectations.

One element of FAI is the Technical Data Package (TDP), composed of electronic files that detail a product or item. Downstream teams turn to these files for documents, models and product management information (PMI) necessary for the supply chain.

TDPs are key to the development of everything from acquisition to product support objectives. They define the physical and functional characteristics of approved item configuration and its associated assemblies, subassemblies and parts. Manufacturing engineers and quality engineers separately pore over all of the TDP documents and the part routing to set up in-process inspections.

Challenge: FAI approval depends on models and documents meeting submission criteria — and for that, an accurate TDP is essential. However, this process is often laborious and time-consuming. This is especially true when there’s no digital linkage to the final part characteristics, often leading to quality issues that could delay the entire manufacturing process.

Industry Standards

While specific documents may vary depending on the manufacturer, FAI and inspection planning procedures always require exceptional attention to detail. Depending on the industry, engineers may also need to consider regulatory compliance requiring strict adherence to detailed manufacturing guidelines.

For example, in the aerospace industry, multiple inspection forms are part of FAIs, including AS9100 and AS9102. Other industries have adapted these specialized processes have been adapted to fit other industries, which is why the following three AS9102 elements may be familiar:

  • Part number accountability identifies the part and any associated sub-assemblies.
  • Product accountability assesses if any raw materials or special processes are defined in design.
  • Characteristic accountability verifies compatibility and records measurement of inspection/verification of the FAI part for every design characteristic on the drawing.

These forms standardize the process that comprises a FAIR.

Challenge: Tasking various platforms and resources to ensure the inspection process is a smooth one is a daunting task. This is why many teams need a streamlined, integrated solution that can simplify FAIs, regardless of your manufacturing industry.

Common Inspection Planning Mistakes

To effectively accomplish FAI, your inspection planning process needs to be comprehensive, thorough and well-executed. However, even when you understand the goals and challenges, it’s still possible to run into common mistakes, omissions and issues that hinder the process.

Examples include:

  • Omitting important drawing title block requirements, such as general edge breaks or concentricity requirements.
  • Failure to review the marking character-by-character to the marking requirements for syntax errors.
  • Forgetting specifications listed in the drawing notes that will have a dimensional or interpretive impact on the drawing features.
  • Cleaning up or benching surfaces with tooling points that alter the native surfaces produced by the tooling, which can have a dramatic effect on the inspection results.
  • Not accounting for features that apply to multiple places on the part.

However, it’s difficult to account for every possible challenge. That’s why it’s often just as helpful to identify the underlying causes of these mistakes:

  • Human error: It’s easy to overlook a tiny detail that eventually has big impact, particularly when repetitive or difficult manual efforts are required.
  • Unclear processes: Inspection procedures get complicated, and just one unclear step or requirement can lead to confusion between team members. This, in turn, might mean that your FAI — which is supposed to be consistent — is performed differently every time.
  • Inefficient technology: In many cases, FAI issues stem from a lack of technological support, whether because you’re bridging gaps between unintegrated systems or working with software that isn’t fit for purpose.

DISCUS Solutions for Inspection Planning

The DISCUS family of products enables you to organize the TDP and capture part characteristics much more efficiently for in-process inspection. Reduce the time and labor associated with TDP and increase your inter-department communications with a customizable inspection method that pairs seamlessly with existing databases and terminology. By integrating a DISCUS solution, every employee — from supervisors to engineers — will have clear insight into the inspection form process necessary for FAI compliance.

For example, DISCUS has a panel for analyzing and extracting characteristics from the drawing or model, as well as from the specifications. The system generates the list of part-specific characteristics and creates associated ballooned illustrations.

For specific information on DISCUS modules, stop by our Products page. Be sure to review the pricing for the discounted bundles on the Pricing page.

Why DISCUS?

DISCUS reduces the opportunity for error by equipping your manufacturing staff with built-in checks designed to account for every FAI component. By automating what is traditionally a meticulous process hindered by the need to jump between multiple platforms, your DISCUS solution saves valuable time — all while ensuring that increased productivity doesn’t come at the expense of attention to detail.

The DISCUS strategy for safety inspection planning enables you to quickly create your inspection forms for each operation. You can configure the inspection planning solution to meet your business situation. For example, you can use in-process drawings as well as in-process characteristics (i.e., those that do not appear on the final outcome) and reconcile all these characteristics to ensure that you address all requirements.

Learn more about the DISCUS approach for inspection planning by visiting the DISCUS Planner pages. You can view a description of the benefits, screenshots and a video demo.

Spotlight: DISCUS Planner

DISCUS Planner manages characteristics by specific operation, including the creation of process illustrations and work instructions. By organizing the documents that comprise the TDP, DISCUS Planner reduces the time and effort needed to create detailed setup verification and operation inspection sheets.

Thanks to the user-friendly interface, your models and format files all effortlessly integrate into your TDP.

By creating detailed information for each operation, including illustrations and instructions, your engineers can interface with and upload detailed information. They’ll also be able to export a complete process plan. With the ability to text markup illustrations by operation, downstream applications will enjoy the annotated notes and customized information for each individual illustration.

Master Inspection Planning With DISCUS

If you’re one of the countless manufacturers who must meet required inspection criteria to satisfy customer requests, regulatory requirements, quality goals and industry standards, you’re plenty familiar with the inherent challenges. From laborious, disconnected manual processes to ineffective technology solutions, it’s all too easy to find yourself struggling with these crucial inspection tasks.

Fortunately, DISCUS addresses all of those issues and more. Our most common solution for in-process inspections consists of selected DISCUS modules packaged into a bundle:

2D Inspection Planning Suite — DISCUS Desktop with DISCUS IDA® and DISCUS Planner add-ons.

Want to learn more? Let us know what you’re looking for and how we can help. We’ll be in touch with all the information you need to start streamlining and optimizing your inspection planning and FAI processes.