The Measurement System Analysis Audit Checklist

Measurement system analysis is a vital tool for ensuring that your inspection, measuring, and test equipment produces reliable and relevant data. It can help identify sources of error while making improvements to processes.

An effective measurement system is key to upholding product quality and strengthening customer relations, and Six Sigma Black Belts understand how to harness MSA for maximum effect in order to deliver extraordinary results.

Accuracy
No matter if it is done visually by an inspector making subjective judgements or quantitatively by measuring devices providing numerical readings, measurements made can be affected by factors like human error, equipment errors, environmental influences or simply how close a measured value is to its exact value. This can result in inaccurate data which in turn negatively impact process capabilities and lead to bad parts being shipped out for shipment.

This course addresses how to qualify a measurement system using MSAs with criteria such as attribute agreement, variable agreement and stability as its key indicators. The aim is to use MSAs as a way to quantifying and minimizing variations within measurement systems so as to pinpoint their source and ultimately help determine true process variability sources.

MSA should always be completed prior to installing SPC or conducting any capability and improvement studies, to ensure the gages used to collect data are accurate and help avoid costly rework or recall mistakes by keeping bad parts from reaching production lines.

Reliability
Similar to how production processes may vary, measuring systems and data collection processes may also differ significantly, making it essential that an MSA be evaluated prior to making decisions based on them.

The MSA provides you with the means to assess whether or not your measurement system is reliable, ensuring you can trust the data gathered and make correct decisions based on it. Reliability in measurement systems depends on several factors including accuracy and precision: Accuracy is how close measurements come to their actual values while precision refers to how closely related they are between each other.

As accurate and precise measurements are of utmost importance to ensure bad parts don’t reach customers, an MSA is invaluable in helping identify errors in your measurement system and improve the performance of inspection, test, and lab equipment. MSA Pro provides organizations with a powerful application designed specifically to catalog, calibrate and study measurement uncertainty of inspection test lab equipment.

Repeatability
An analysis of a measurement system is an experimental and mathematical technique designed to quantify the amount of quality variation introduced into a process by measuring instruments. A measurement system encompasses people, equipment, materials and methods used for collecting data which can directly compare against its true value of an item being tested.

Step one in implementing and conducting statistical data-based decision making processes and any capability or process improvement initiatives such as Statistical Process Control or Correlation Analysis is to establish an audit trail.

Gage R&R studies involve various calculations to ascertain variation within an operator (repeatability) and between operators or systems (reproducibility). The results can then be used to identify areas where additional training or standard operating procedures could improve data collected – ultimately decreasing risk and the chance that bad parts reach customers.

Correlation
An MSA is the starting point in any data-based decision making process. It identifies characteristics of a measurement system that have an effect on data collection and results, such as precision and accuracy, that could ultimately enhance quality data collected – saving both time and money in the process.

Measuring system errors may be caused by various sources, including environmental conditions, equipment failures and human error. When conducting an MSA, all potential sources of error must be carefully considered along with specific quality tools that evaluate the system in its entirety.

An MSA’s primary objectives are to assess the accuracy, repeatability, and reproducibility of a measurement system. Furthermore, it’s essential that MSAs determine whether they can distinguish between values or whether there is bias; this can be accomplished via Gauge R&R studies, attribute agreement analyses, linearity/bias analyses, stability tests etc. By assessing these properties an MSA can identify what actions must be taken in order to reach acceptable levels of performance.