May 2021 New Features

Over the last few months, we've built and released a number of new features. Here's a list of all the changes we've made so far, along with a list of changes that will be activated in the next few weeks.

1. Drawing Ballooning Improvements:
Our auto-ballooning capability is ready, and is going through a beta-testing at a few customer sites after which it will be made available to all customers. With auto-ballooning, you can balloon a drawing with just a few clicks, and save hours of time. A tutorial video will be available under "help" shortly.

In preparation for auto-ballooning, we've made changes to how the current point-and-click ballooning works:

• Dimensional specs that have been fully recognized, are now highlighted with a solid blue background
• Tolerances that are split from the nominal and displayed on a separate line are boxed using solid blue lines. These can be added to the +Tol and -Tol field by point-and-click action
• Notes and other descriptor (e.g. THRU ALL) are highlighted with a yellow background. As before, multiple lines can be combined into a single note by clicking each line.

As before, you can either balloon and capture the specification with a point-and-click action, record the specification manually, or enjoy fully automated ballooning.

The new release also addresses a number of previous shortcomings. For example, we now detect vertical dimensions on image drawings. (Previously, we would only detect vertical dimensions on text-searchable drawings).

And most importantly, we are about a week away from releasing auto-ballooning. You'll see this button show up soon (Week of June 7 release).

Watch what happens when you click on the Auto-Balloon button below:




2. Feature Performance Charts:
We have redesigned the Feature Performance (Mfg. Perf. and Receiving Perf.) analysis to help you quickly identify your best and worst performing parts, and identify the parts requiring the most inspection.

The Manufacturing Feature Performance and Receiving Feature Performance tiles now show a list of Parts / Plans sorted by Worst-to-Best on the basis of Parts-In-Spec%. You can change the sort order and date range. For example, you may want to sort by number of measurements to see which parts require the most measurements.

As before, you can search for a part number, and then drill down to see how each feature is performing across inspections (over time). You can also download the data to excel for further analysis.



Note: You will also notice a simplification of the Analytics page. We've removed the "Supplier Dashboard" and "Supplier Performance" tiles. This only impacts customers who were receiving data from suppliers. This functionality is being redesigned

3. Inspection Method Charts
Once you've identified a part number from the Manufacturing or Receiving Feature Performance page, you can drill down to see how many measurements were made for the part number with each inspection methods. We hope this is helpful to identify and eliminate production bottlenecks. 

 
4. Up-Rev an Inspection
For accounts with Version Controlled QC Plans, you've likely encountered a problem where you've started with an inspection and realized that you have a mistake in the plan. After revising the plan, you had to manually create a new inspection and copy data over (because the inspection was linked to the old version of the plan).

We've simplified this down to a single click. After updating the plan, go to the open inspection, and click on Up-rev Inspection.


5. Measurement History (Audit Button)
For each measurement, we now display every single measurement along with the date, time and user name. So if a measurement was overwritten or deleted, you will see it in history (using the audit button).


6. Default Settings for Row and Group Identifier
We have added default settings for Row Identifiers (e.g. Serial Numbers) and for Group Identifiers (e.g. Cavity or Roll Numbers). Now you can activate this once under settings, and it will apply to all new plans created.

7. Data Entry Navigation
The system now remembers which Feature and Part (Unit number) you last clicked on and keeps you on that same Feature-Part combination cell as you navigate between the different data-entry views. 

8. PPAP (Beta-Release Status Update)
The Beta-testing of the PPAP module is progressing well. With the help of the beta customers, we've identified enhancements that we will incorporate, for a mid-June release to all customers.
 

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As always, we are available to answer any questions. We also welcome any feedback related to these or other changes. You can reach us at the email or number below.

1factory, Inc.
email: [e-mail]
phone: [phone]