Integrated quality control system

Claim 1

An integrated quality control system comprising a database (106) for collecting manufacturing information including design information, manufacturing history information and inspection information of a product manufactured at a manufacturing factory (A,B,C,D), field information including failure information on the product in the field and repair information on the product and sales information on the product, comprising: means for connecting the manufacturing factory with a service location (100) in the field through networks (102, 104, 200, 210), receiving at said service location (100) said field information (Fig. 2) in conjunction with processing information applied against the failure generated in the field, or with information on at least the product type, failure state, name of failure part and the failure of the failed product, and storing them at said database (106) through the networks; a user interface means (204) for receiving an analysis request and for outputting graphical information analyzing causes of failure for every product type based upon information stored in said database; a failure analysis module (248) for displaying on a monitor (212) of a work station (210) at least a transition diagram [Fig.8(a)], graphs [Fig.8(b), Fig.8(c) and Fig.8(e)], a constructive ratio diagram [Fig.8(d)] and a scatter diagram [Fig.8(f)] designating at least the number of failures, a repair charge and a failure rate [Fig.7(a)] for a number of retrieving conditions [Fig.7(b)] of at least a failure year and month, a product type, a part name, a failure state code and an operating month in response to information stored in said database (106), the failure analysis module (248) further displaying limit values of analysis every time said retrieving conditions are received from said user interface means, repeating said display, concurrently recording said retrieving conditions and the history of analysis and enabling regeneration in a reverse order; a failure prediction module (250) for predicting and displaying on a monitor of the work station the number of occurrences of failure for every future operating month [Fig.13] in accordance with information on the occurrence of failure up to the current time stored in said database and sales (shipment) information on the product of said product type or the product equipped with a part having said part name for the product type or the part name defined by said retrieving conditions added in said failure analysis module; and an alarm management module (252) for producing an alarm when a predicted failure rate predicted in said failure occurence predicting module exceeds a limit value of a failure rate set in advance for each product type and predicting the time, at which the limit value will be exceeded.

Claim 4

A system according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the failure analysis module (248) includes: means for correlating the information relating to failure of the product and processing applied to correct the failure with the information relating to manufacturing and sales of the product stored in said database; means for displaying the correlated information in a continuous manner in dependence upon limited predetermined parameters of the product and expanding the display based upon the predetermined parameters; and means for displaying the correlated information in different graphical forms, applying predetermined parameters to one of the graphical forms, and displaying the correlated information in a different graphical form representing an expansion of the display based upon the predetermined parameters.