Article: Quality monitoring just snaps into place

Many plant-floor measurement devices are supplied with quite capable PC-based software these days, but an increasing number of manufacturers are preferring to have standard software across the site, particularly so that standard SPC charting can be shown everywhere, regardless of the device doing the measurement.

With this arrangement, as you move from instrument to instrument, or indeed as devices get changed, the data collection and display software on the PCs remains the same.

NWA Quality Monitor has a long pedigree at this task, and this development history makes it particularly easy to set up. If you want to make real time SPC charts available on the shop floor, as well as providing quality-related alarms, whilst still preventing data from being edited, Quality Monitor is the software you need.

Interfacing the measurement devices to the PCs can be one of the most difficult parts of setting up plant-floor data collec-tion, but NWA Quality Monitor comes with an extensive list of pre-configured device interfaces, including most electronic scales, gauges and multiplexers.

In fact, as anyone who has worked with interfacing instrumentation and PCs before, if you can make this part straightforward, you've almost cracked the problem from the outset. But you'll be pleased to know, with NWA Quality Monitor, creating the controls and reporting side of things to the format you require is equally easy.