There is a special forum, called Alarms, for viewing the status of current processes. With alarms, you can check on the status of all active processes without having the chart of every active data set on your screen. If you are networking the WPG SPC applications, you can look at all the products that are open at any SPC workstation. Alarms show you, at a glance, which processes are out of control. Critical statistical tests can be configured to assign a status of Warning, Alert, or Control to a set when data fails a test. As you enter data on a characteristic, SPC runs the configured statistical tests to assess process control. It displays data points in red, yellow, or green depending upon whether or not the data passed or failed the configured statistical tests. When a subgroup fails a statistical test, it is displayed in the color of the failed test’s state on the control chart. In alarms, SPC displays color-coded statuses of current data sets: red for Alert and yellow for Warning. If a subgroup fails more than one statistical test, it assumes the worst state. For instance, if a subgroup fails two tests, one with a Warning state and one with an Alert state, it turns red and is considered in an Alert state. Similarly a product or location assumes the status of the worst characteristic data. If 100 characteristics are being collected on a product and only one characteristic has failed a statistical test with a Warning state, the characteristic turns yellow and, consequently so does the product when you view it in Alarms. We can configure Alarm groups according to which Locations, Products or Workstations we want to group together. You can create alarm groups in System Setup within SPC Administrator. Go to the SPC Administrator module, and go up to the tool bar and select the SPC System Setup button, which is the big cog wheel. You will be working in the SPC System Setup area – Alarm groups. Right click on Location, and select Add. Then, enter the name of the Alarm Group and click OK. Next, highlight all of the locations for the process. Click Add to add them to the group. Click Apply to save the new alarm group. In order to create a product alarm, right click on Product and enter the name of the alarm group. Click Ok, then highlight all of the products you want to be put in the list, and click Apply. In order to create a workstation alarm group, right click on Workstation and in the alarm group field, enter the name of the desired alarm group and click Ok. Highlight the desired workstations and Click Add and Apply. When you want to see what the operators are collecting in real time, you can access the alarms area of SPC Examiner. In order to see the alarm groups that are available, click the plus sign (+) beside the Alarms section. The system will expand the view so you can see all of the options. By looking at this screen you can tell the status at each data collection location. Green means that it is in control, yellow means that it is in a warning state, and red means that it is in an alert state. If you want more detailed information, double-click on the location. Double-click on a product. The system immediately takes you to the control chart for that product, process, location, and characteristic. To generate other charts and reports, users can click the Chart option in the menu bar. The same options are available in SPC Examiner as are available in SPC Operator. In the General tab, there are some additional buttons on the right hand side of the screen. Here is a description of each.
i. Update: Refreshes the selected alarm group workspace (it will refresh even if auto refresh is on but we have not reached the auto refresh period).
ii. Background Color: Indicates if you want SPC Examiner to display a different background color for the Alarm tab workspace. Select modify if you want to choose another color.
iii. Sort By: Indicate how you want SPC Examiner to sort alarm information.
iv. Alarm Status: check the alarm status(es) you want SPC Examiner to display.
Check out the video How Do I? - Using Alarm Groups for more information.
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