Quality management systems performance boundaries versus system demands

The intent of this paper is to present an approach to the problem of system performance evaluation. In common with all systems, quality management systems (QMS) have performance boundaries which must be determined and observed in relation to the workload of any given manufacturing environment. This paper describes a system evaluation approach based on simulation, supported by hardware measurements, and its use in a quality management system application. Specific systems for evaluation are defined and applied to the Q1S environment. Results obtained from evaluating a real system show close correlation with those obtained from simulation, thus proving the suitability of this technique to system performance evaluation.