u/Zigma999

Last week I visited a contract manufacturer doing maybe 50-100 employees. Good shop, experienced people, clearly knew their stuff.

But their quality process? Fully manual. Operators wrote measurements on a paper log. A supervisor entered it into Excel at the end of the shift. The quality manager pulled that Excel to build a weekly report. And they were only finding out about process drift after the scrap had already been made.

When I showed them a live SPC control chart updating in real time as a gauge feeds data directly into the software, the quality manager literally went quiet for a second and said "we could have caught last month's issue with this."

They're currently in a trial. No pressure post — just thought it was a good reminder that a lot of shops are still operating this way and don't realize how much it's costing them.

Anyone else still seeing fully manual QC processes out there? What's the biggest pushback you get when trying to digitize?

Last week I visited a contract manufacturer doing maybe 50-100 employees. Good shop, experienced people, clearly knew their stuff.

But their quality process? Fully manual. Operators wrote measurements on a paper log. A supervisor entered it into Excel at the end of the shift. The quality manager pulled that Excel to build a weekly report. And they were only finding out about process drift after the scrap had already been made.

When I showed them a live SPC control chart updating in real time as a gauge feeds data directly into the software, the quality manager literally went quiet for a second and said "we could have caught last month's issue with this."

They're currently in a trial. No pressure post — just thought it was a good reminder that a lot of shops are still operating this way and don't realize how much it's costing them.

Anyone else still seeing fully manual QC processes out there? What's the biggest pushback you get when trying to digitize?

I recently had an 11.25KW system installed (took advantage of the $10k federal loan). As part of the initial sales pitch by the solar company, I have been given a free Pion Power Trek 4200 Portable Power Station rated for 4200VA

Although its meant to be portable and has wheels, and can be taken for camping etc., it is quite heavy (67kg).

Would it be possible to use it as a backup at home to power the lights, refrigerator, TV. the light stuff, nothing high rated.

Please let me know if anyone has done anything similar or what are the options.

Thanks