descriptive standards?

[vonsteimel]

I'm a mechanical engineer working for a small manufacturing business. Aside from having a BS in Mechanical Engineering I also have an AS in Drafting & Design.

I've been dragged into system engineering at work (information handling systems) such as inventory system, change control.etc

One of the things we lack are sufficient Technical Standards. More specifically, we lack proper descriptions for parts in our inventory. Everything from Paint, Glue, & Resin to Rivets, Bearings & Belts. We may have 10 or 12 different types of rivets and each one will be spec'ed out differently. It just depends on who put the item into our system, on what day and how they were feeling at the time.

All are parts within our system are like this. It can create a real problem for purchasing, inventory and development. We need to apply proper data entry standards.

From my drafting days, I remember how they taught us to spec out threads, fasteners, pipe .etc But where did these descriptive standards come from? I went through my ANSI book & Machinist handbook and can't find any descriptive standards of any use.

I assume some organization such as ASE or ASME has come up with descriptive standards to avoid the situations my business is facing.

Does anyone where I can find descriptive standards that I'm looking for?
Thanks,

CS

 

[KENAT]

ASME Y14.100 gives the basic requirements for part naming/drawing titles at section 5.

ASME Y14.38 is the abbreviation standard.

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(probably not aimed specifically at you)
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[JJPellin]

It sounds like you have a very good idea what needs to be done. I went through a similar process with our warehouse stock many years ago. You may have some difficulty finding an existing standard for parts descriptions. I did not find any then, and am still not aware of any today. I basically created my own. I was not able to get the software configured to force the proper description format. That would have been ideal. For example, the standard description for a part for a steam turbine might look like this:

Steam End Radial Bearing for Elliott Turbine Model: AYR, Serial Number: C37295, Equipment Number: T24P-14, Part Number: Y77639-01, Drawing Number: 0003-21993-Rev 3, Item Number: 455

It might be possible to have the software ask for all of these values and then the software automatically builds the answers into the preferred format. As an alternative, we used a three step process. I wrote the preferred description format for the main categories of stock. Then I corrected all existing stock to that format. Then, I communicated to the entire organization that all new stock had to be formatted to match the existing stock of the same type. Even then, every few years I would have to go back and correct the errors to force it back to the preferred description format.

I started this process with the most important or most frequently used parts. In our case, I think it was bearings, mechanical seals, pump parts, turbine parts, compressor parts, belts, couplings and lubricants near the top of the list. This standardization included more than just the description. In order to be able to find stock when needed, it was important that fields for manufacturer, part number, size, etc were all used the same. This was a lot of work. But it paid out in improved efficiency for purchasing, warehouse inventory management, planning, work execution, reliability, etc. I was dealing with about 10,000 stock items set up over the past 50 years.


Johnny Pellin

 

[tr1ntx]

It's not really a "standard" but maybe if you can look in a book on Lean Manufacturing, KanBan, or maybe even Manufacturing or Industrial Engineering, there might be some methodology or system lined out. You'll have to determine how to best fit it to your operation.

For instance, you can sort your bearings primarily by type:
Bearing, Pillow Block, Tapered Roller, 4 bolt, Setscrew, 5-5/16" shaft ...
or by size:
Bearing, 5-5/16" shaft, Setscrew, Pillow Block, Ball ...

There can't really be a standard for it because the order of the descriptors will depend on each company and what their respective sorting criteria are.

 

[GregTirevold]

The simple way I was taught for data entry was

NOUN, adjective1, adjective2, adjective3.......

The idea being you will likely NEVER be able to get different people to actually do data entry the same way so at least get people to put the noun first. This helps sort the list 80% of the way and often the order of the adjectives is not as critical.

You can tell people to put dimensional adjectives first, then material adjectives and then everything else. Or pick some other priority for the adjectives that suits you better. The basic premise remains the same, the noun does a bulk of the work in the description.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregtirevold

 

[Ron]

Greg has given you the military way...not so pretty, but functional...consider it.

 

[IRstuff]

The alternative is to provide a user interface with a rigid input structure, not unlike the one for this website, you enter something, and then you have to do something else before you can post a new thread.

You can help your GUI out by providing contextual choices, like in Windows Explorer, which gives you prompts for every folder that starts wit "e" if you type "\e" each additional piece of information further reduces the choices or eliminates them altogether, indicating that it's not in the database.

TTFN

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