MRED 424 Quality Control and Equipment Reliability

Part A. Quality control. Historical development and general concepts of quality control (assurance, certification, ISO, total quality). Statistics and probability theory for quality control. Sampling for variables and quality characteristics. Methods for determining single, double, multiple and continuous sampling plans. Statistical process control, construction of control charts x-R, x-S, cumulative, moving average and acceptance. Hotelling control charts for multiple quality characteristics. Examples and applications from the mineral industry (mining companies, cement companies, etc.).

Part B. Equipment reliability. Basic concepts, definitions and mathematics for equipment reliability. Reliability models (systems in series, in parallel, in mixed configuration, systems with redundancy). Calculation of reliability of continuous and discontinuous mining systems.

Exercises. The teaching of the course includes 7 laboratorial and computational exercises: 1. Characterisation of concrete strength by Schmidt hammer and statistical analysis of measurements-errors. 2. Computer simulation of simple and continuous sampling plans. 3. Calculation of basic statistical quantities required during quality control sampling, confidence intervals and sample size. 4. Design-analysis of sampling plans. 5. Statistical control process diagrams (SPC) for quality variables as well as for quality characteristics. 6. Calculation of reliability of mining equipment. 7. Calculation of reliability of continuous mining systems.