Abstract:The outer coating of an optical fiber cable protects the optical fiber, and the contraction rate of the outer coating can affect the communication capacity and distance, so the contraction rate is often regarded as the key factor in defining the quality of an optical fiber cable. For this reason, using the example of the circular single-pin optical fiber cable manufacturing process of the largest optical communication manufacturer in the world, the Taguchi Method (TM) is used to screen the variables that have significant effects on the contraction rate of the outer coating. Furthermore, the optimization engineering of Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is utilized for the empirical research to acquire a prediction model that can be used to optimize the optical fiber outer coating injection molding process. The research results show that the contraction rate predicted by the integration of the Taguchi Method and RSM is 2.28%. The empirical results reveal that the contraction rate of the outer coating indeed decreased from the original 3.83% down to 2.16%, indicating that the integration of the Taguchi Method and RSM could effectively improve the quality.
With the pressure of intensive global competition and the trend of shortening product life-cycle, the procedure for new product development (NPD) has become the focus of business concerns and investment of large corporations and the key strategy to upgrade competitiveness of corporations. An effective NPD procedure can meet the demands on quality, time-to-delivery and cost limitations of a corporation. Measuring and analysing the performance of the existing NPD procedure and pinpointing and resolving the problems of the existing NPD procedure is the key to improve the NPD performance to meet a corporation's demands. Six Sigma is a systemic procedure commonly used to improve product quality. This paper proposes a model to evaluate and improve the performance of NPD procedures by following the systemic procedure of Six Sigma and applying criteria defined by application of performance matrix, factor analysis, and theory of constraints. The resulting model is then verified with real life NPD procedures from a certain semi-conductor equipment manufacturer such that corporative competitiveness can be enhanced through the elevating cycle of performance evaluation, problem excavation, causes analysis, and countermeasure determination and execution proposed by this paper.
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