Optimization of Diesel Engine Test Deployment Via Statistical Methods

This paper describes Consolidated Diesel Corporation's approach to optimizing Production Engine Test Deployment utilizing Statistical Methods to treat daily production as populations rather than the more traditional One Test-One Decision-Each-Time.

The transformation in thinking from one engine-one decision regarding accept/adjust/reject to applying the classic rules of Statistical Quality Control (SQC) & Statistical Process Control (SPC) began with a cross functional workgroup conducting a Taguchi L12 Orthogonal Array Design of Experiment. Results of that testing provided the workgroup insight into mapping the per cent tolerance consumed by fuel system settings, engine timing, fuel viscosity, and instrumentation.

Substantial improvements in first time pass rate, productivity thruput, and inventory turns have been documented.