SQC for Access™ In today’s competitive market, just applying statistical quality control, SQC, techniques to your data is not enough. The extraordinary growth in computer based information has forced customers, manufacturers and management to demand more access to the original data. Questions like "Is the product  in statistical control?" becoming common place. SQC for Access™™ provides Quality Control experts with a tool to manage massive amounts of data in a professionally designed state-of-the-art database. SQC for Access™™ is a fully functional database developed using Microsoft® Access. It comes with its own run-time license so you do not need to purchase Microsoft® Access. This product is an integral part of the Microsoft® family of products and will allow you to import and export data, charts, and reports among all Microsoft® products. SQC for Access™™  is available for Microsoft® Excel 97, 2000 and XP (2002). The product runs on both IBM-compatible platforms and requires Microsoft® Excel and Microsoft® Access. SQC for Access™ provides Quality Control experts with a tool to manage massive amounts of data in a professionally designed state of the art database. SQC for Access™ is a fully functional database developed using Microsoft® Access. It comes with its own run-time license so you do not need to purchase Microsoft® Access. This product is an integral part of the Microsoft® family of products and will allow you to import and export data, charts and reports among all Microsoft® products. The SQC for Access™ program is developed in two parts: ·     The Statistical Quality Control (SQC) Database ·     The SQC for Excel™ Quality Report Generator The SQC for Access™ program (SFA_Main.MDE) is designed to communicate with the SQC database (SFA_Data.MDB) to add, edit, and maintain all of your quality related data. The SQC for Access™ program will start the SQC for Excel™ program automatically using Microsoft Automation technology once the user requests to generate SQC reports The SQC for Access™ database is designed specifically to store quality related data. The database is designed as a relationship database with the following structure. ·        Plant, Equipment and Measurement (Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3) ·        Cases or Analysis Method ·        Batch ·        Data (Level 4) Let’s assume the following example. A quality control manager wants to design a database for a site. There are a three plants, each with two machines, each machine produces a set of products that the weight, width and height needs to be measured and the customer requires the SQC charts and Capability reports. The objective is for the operator for each machine to enter that data for weight, width and height every hours and the quality control engineer to develop the charts on daily bases.   There for the data structure for the North Plant is presented as: However, the East Plant has a different machine (Machine C) One can utilize SQC for Access database to define the following ·        Level 1 è Plant ·        Level 2 è Machine of Equipment ·        Level 3 è Measurement ·        Level 4 è Data for each Measurement   or These data can be stored in the 5th layer or SQC Case data base. For example a case can be created for all Height measurements. Finally in some cases, the company makes different batches of the same product and from quality control point of view you require to generate the charts for each product. The Batch data base allows you to assign a measurement to a batch.   When developing multi-user database solutions with Microsoft Access, you may find it helpful to split your objects into two databases. This approach offers many advantages. These two databases are known as the front-end database and the back-end database. The front-end database has three basic characteristics: ·        It contains non-data objects, such as saved queries, forms, reports, macros, and modules. It can also contain additional objects created by the user for personal use. ·        It serves as an area for managing temporary objects. Most multi-user solutions perform some type of data access that is temporary in nature: creating tables with transient data, for example. ·        You distribute a copy for each user to run from his or her workstation. ·        Performance is improved because the application portion of the database, the user interface, is on the user's local hard disk. ·        Network traffic is reduced because only the data travels over the network; all other objects in the database are local. ·        Updating your application is easier. You can make design changes to the front-end database, and then distribute the changes to users without changing any of the data in the back-end database. The back-end database contains the tables that hold your solution's data. The tables in this database are accessed by your solution through links in the front-end database. The SQC for Access single user program can be described as Where as the multi-user data base is represented Assume that you would like to design a database with the following information. There are 3 production facilities or plants. Their relationship to one another are: There are 3 pieces of equipment that build a set of products. The Widget A and Widget B are assembled in packaging to create the final product. The following represents the measurement that are taken for each piece of equipment. The data for each measurement is collected and stored in the 4th layer Utilizing the SQC for Access link to SQC for Excel one can generate varieties of charts and reports.