MINIMIZING NUMBER OF DEFECTS IN NICKEL PLATING PROCESS USING FACTORIAL DESIGN

Product defects may have a serious problem in any manufacturing company because they may increase the production cost due to rework, delays, waste of time and material. The purpose of this study was to investigate significant factors and their interactions in order to find the optimal setting that could reduce the number of defects in nickel plating line. Factorial design has been used as the experimental design technique to identify the critical factors to be controlled. This experiment investigated three different factors using full factorial design. The results were analyzed using Design Expert software. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was utilized to find the most significant factors. The finding suggested that only one main factor Brightner Correction Solution (BCS) and one interaction factor (BCS and hot COT temperature) affected the number of defects in nickel plating line. The optimum process setting was attained at 22 g/L of BCS and 50°C of hot COT (Cream or Tartar) temperature. A confirmation run using these new settings approved a reduced number of defects in nickel plating process.