Integrating Knowledge Engineering Aspects into Quality Tools

Throughout the last years quality tools like the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) or Quality Function Deployment (QFD) have become significant relevant in most production industries. They are part of the preventive actions within the company's quality system. Their use partially even is required by customers especially in the automotive industry. One main concept of quality tools is the understanding of the cause and effect relationships of failures which form an important part of an enterprise's knowledge base. Many cause and effect relationships are uncertain and their description strongly depends on the subjective evaluation of the employees involved in the process. Therefore the application of quality tools is often accompanied by the problem of poor acceptance of results or erroneous assumptions throughout the whole design and production process. To solve this problem the knowledge should be classified and evaluated with regard to the context of its development and application. The lecture describes an approach discussing classification and evaluation concepts for the knowledge used in the FMEA and showing how these concepts can be put into practice.