The objective of this internship project is to assess the effectiveness of expert system technology in the analysis and interpretation of Statistical Process Control charts in a wire harness manufacturing setting. A prototype expert system will be built using a "rapid prototyping" approach. The system will be capable of identifying out of control conditions, assignable causes and the necessary corrective action(s) to bring the process back into control. The performance and effectiveness of the system will be validated through simulation based on actual production data. Various artificial process scenarios will be tested to investigate the accuracy of the system's diagnostic ability and different types of statistical control charts will also be investigated.
