This thread got me thinking about my days as an operations manager at a top US defense contractor and what I learned about Statistical Process Control in regards to manufacturing. The goal for major manufactures who put a strong emphasis on quality or lean manufacturing is to develop processes that perform at six sigma or better. What that means is statistically you can produce parts/features within a normal distribution that are +/- 6 standard deviations (sigma) within spec. What that boils down to (factoring in sigma shift) is that your 6sigma process will yield a success rate of 99.99966% or 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO). Now that seems pretty good, but hypothetically, if you figure there are 12 critical components on a Phantom 3 (4 motors, 4 props, 4 electrical components) and if DJI produces say 500,000 Phantom 3 drones this year with a respectable 6sigma process, it could still create a potential for 20 (3.4 / 2 x 12 = ~20) brand new Phantom 3s to have a failure and fall out of the sky potentially without warning. Although that is a relatively small number it is still scary and could lead to someone getting seriously hurt.
I am certainly not implying that DJI has any sort of manufacturing issue and it’s not my intent to put them down in anyway. For now, pilot error will most likely be the cause of most drone crashes. But I wanted to illustrate how important the quality of the manufacturing process is when you consider producing products at large quantities. Even very slight margins of error can have a significant consequence, especially for systems like drones that are flying over people and property. It is statistically impossible to create a manufacturing process that has absolutely zero defects and drones will have defects that will cause them to fall out of the sky. As the number of drones goes up so will the number of failures. The question is, what does the drone community due to make the situation safer in the long-run?
I was inspired to write an article on my Blog about the topic, if you are interested in learning more, please check it out, http://mydailydrone.com/will-my-new-phantom-3-randomly-fall-out-of-the-sky.
I am certainly not implying that DJI has any sort of manufacturing issue and it’s not my intent to put them down in anyway. For now, pilot error will most likely be the cause of most drone crashes. But I wanted to illustrate how important the quality of the manufacturing process is when you consider producing products at large quantities. Even very slight margins of error can have a significant consequence, especially for systems like drones that are flying over people and property. It is statistically impossible to create a manufacturing process that has absolutely zero defects and drones will have defects that will cause them to fall out of the sky. As the number of drones goes up so will the number of failures. The question is, what does the drone community due to make the situation safer in the long-run?
I was inspired to write an article on my Blog about the topic, if you are interested in learning more, please check it out, http://mydailydrone.com/will-my-new-phantom-3-randomly-fall-out-of-the-sky.
