A Model for Detection and Refinement of Fixed Bending Regions for Improving the Degree of Thickness Uniformity in Rolled Film Manufacturing
As film products are increasingly used in a wide range of areas, from producing traditional flexible packaging to high-tech electronic products, a higher level of quality is demanded. Most film products are made in the form of rolled finished goods, therefore, various quality issues related to their shape characteristics must be addressed. The thickness of the film products is one of the most common and important critical-to-quality attributes (CTQs). Particularly, the degree of thickness uniformity is more important than other thickness parameters, because it will be potential causes of many secondary thickness-related quality problems, such as wrinkles or faulty windings. To control the degree of thickness uniformity, the fixed bending region is oneof the most important CTQs to manage. Fixed bending regions are special points in the transverse direction of a rolled product with consistent minute variations of the thickness gap. This paper describes the measurement and analysis of thickness uniformity data, which were performed in a real manufacturing field of biaxial oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film. In previous researches, quality function deployment (QFD) or fault tree analysis were used to find the most critical process attributes out to controlthe CTQ of thickness uniformity. Whereas, this paper uses traditional control charts to find the most critical process attributes out in this problem. In addition, the selection of one of the major critical process attributes (CTPs) that is expected to affect the CTQ of thickness uniformity is also described. The selected critical-to-process attributes are the controlled temperatures along the transverse direction. A dramatic improvement in thickness uniformity was observed when the selected CTPs were controlled.