First Article Inspection (FAI) sheets are one of the most critical and formal parts of the R&D process for ensuring design verification, along with reliable and repeatable manufacturing processes. Typically, FAI’s do not have a standard format between companies; to make matters worse, they are also used during different parts of the design process.
Between the lack of consistency, need to coordinate between multiple parts of a project, and ongoing revisions in the design process, managing FAI reports can be a headache. All the moving pieces can lead to errors and additional time needed to compare the results of multiple revisions. Worst of it all, its a manual process.
Can you imagine never having to create or compare FAI reports manually?
With T360, there is a way! T360 uses Smart FAI to instantly and automatically create FAI reports from tolerance stack data with no manual input to the sheet. It works something like this (click to enlarge):
Once generated, the smart FAI sheet can easily be exported to internal or external manufacturers to create and inspect the parts and record the results directly back into the form.
Once the manufacturer is done with it, the FAI can be directly integrated back into the T360 data system to compare manufacturing results to the most recent design data and allow engineers to better manage any non-conforming results.
The T360 FAI is “smart” and automatically highlights any results that do not meet the design intent of the original exported FAI sheet. By using the database backend, FAI history can be easily tracked and used to compare to new design or manufacturing changes.
Overall, T360 FAI helps improve quality from the beginning of the development process by ensuring manufacturing can meet design intent and also eliminating any mistakes to prevent costly scrapping or reworking of the product after full production has begun.
It’s just more efficient.
