Notes on control, tooling and evidence
Practical writing for die-casting, stamping and moulding teams. How to keep tooling, quality and audit evidence tied to the work that produced it.
Job cards, preventive maintenance and critical spares, with the history written as the work happens.
Browse tooling →Released control plans, inspection capture and capability, kept tied to the characteristic and revision.
Browse quality →Turn the records you already keep into an evidence trail an auditor can follow.
Browse audit →Cp or Pp, which capability index should you report?
Cp and Pp are not two names for one thing. One asks how good the process could be, the other how good it actually was. Report the one you were not asked for and you answer a question nobody put to you.
A variable Gage R&R needs numbers to work on, and a go/no-go gauge only gives you pass or fail. So you measure agreement, not repeatability in millimetres. What an attribute MSA checks, and the known-standard parts it depends on.
August 21, 2026An automated vision system has no operators, so the three-appraiser Gage R&R template measures nothing. What an MSA on a machine that makes its own pass/fail decision actually tests, and why it comes down to the boundary samples you feed it.
August 21, 2026A failed normality test does not mean bad parts. Standard Cpk assumes a bell curve, and flatness, position and runout are non-normal by nature. How to tell an inherent shape from an unstable process, and what to do about each.
August 21, 2026Everyone quotes 1.33, and some customers want 1.67. Both are real, and neither is the whole answer. What sets the target, and why a Cpk on an unstable process is a number about nothing.
August 21, 2026An out-of-spec reading is not the evidence. The response is. What an auditor wants to see after a measurement fails, and the record chain from the failed value to the action that closed it out.
August 20, 2026Every plant has them. The corner behind the press line, the cell inside a steel enclosure, the spot where the tablet loses signal. If your quality capture dies with the wifi, the data ends up on paper. It does not have to.
July 17, 2026A Cpk number in a spreadsheet is not process capability evidence. Without the characteristic, the specification limits, the sample window and the revision behind it, the number cannot answer the question an auditor actually asks.
July 4, 2026When the control plan and the inspection record are separate documents, the link between requirement and measurement has to be rebuilt manually. That rebuilding is where audit evidence breaks down.
June 6, 2026Evidence, in your inbox
Short, practical notes on control, tooling and audit evidence for SME manufacturers. No noise.
Tooling, quality and audit evidence on one foundation
See how records written as the work happens become the evidence you need later.