Gage R2&E2: an effective tool to improve the visual control of products

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The variability of the results of a visual control is often high. This paper aims to propose a new tool to give information about what improvement actions can be carried out to reduce this variability. Design/methodology/approach -The variability of a visual control can be measured by Kappa's Fleiss which measures the level of agreement between appraisers and experts. The R&R Gage is then classically used to give information about corrective actions which can be carried out in order to improve this level of agreement. The paper demonstrated that this information is not always sufficient. Findings -By considering the two essential steps of a visual control (exploration and evaluation), the R2&E2 Gage proposed gives more precise information about the improvement actions to carry out to reduce the variability of a visual control. Repeatability and reproducibility, for detection and evaluation purposes, are considered separately. Research limitations/implications -This R2&E2 gage is one result of a European research program called INTERREG. The aim of this program, which brings together two laboratories from the University of Savoy and EPFL, two institutional partners (CTDEC and CETEHOR) and some Swiss and French industrial companies, is to create methodological support and the tools needed to improve the visual control of high added-value products. Practical implications -This R2&E2 gage has been used in six industrial companies involved in the European program INTERREG. Significant improvement of the visual control has been observed over a short time. Originality/value -The paper fulfils an identified need of industrial firms to have efficient tools improving the visual control of their products.

RRep: A composite index to assess and test rater precision

“…In several business and industrial systems, as well as in many medical, social and behavioural contexts, diagnostic assessment relies on subjective evaluations provided by small groups of human raters, who may be -depending on the specific context-field experts (eg, physicians, 1,2 sensory panelists, 3,4 risk assessors 5 ) or trained operators (eg, mystery shoppers, visual inspectors [6][7][8] ). In subjective evaluation systems, human raters act as measurement instruments [9][10][11][12] and they can be a main source of epistemic uncertainty.…”