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.

Multi-source evaporation is one of the methods to improve the thickness uniformity of thin films deposited by evaporation. In this study, a simulator for the relative thickness profile of a thin film deposited by a multi-source evaporation system was developed. Using this simulator, the relative thickness profiles of the evaporated thin films were simulated under various conditions, such as the number and arrangements of sources and source-to-substrate distance. The optimum conditions, in which the thickness uniformity is minimized, and the corresponding efficiency, were obtained. The substrate was a 5th generation substrate (dimensions of 1300 mm × 1100 mm). The number of sources and source-to-substrate distance were varied from 1 to 6 and 0 to the length of the major axis of the substrate (1300 mm), respectively. When the source plane, the area on which sources can be located, is limited to the substrate dimension, the minimum thickness uniformity, obtained when the number of sources is 6, was 3.3%; the corresponding efficiency was 16.6%. When the dimension of the source plane is enlarged two times, the thickness uniformity is remarkably improved while the efficiency is decreased. The minimum thickness uniformity, obtained when the number of sources is 6, was 0.5%; the corresponding efficiency was decreased to 9.1%. The expansion of the source plane brings about not only the improvement of the thickness uniformity, but also a decrement of the efficiency and an enlargement of equipment.