Title: Managing the firing process of ceramics tiles to reduce convexity defect: design of experiment approach

Authors: Fikri Dweiri; Sharfuddin Ahmed Khan

Addresses: Industrial Engineering and Management Department, University of Sharjah, P.O. Box 27272, Sharjah, UAE ' Industrial Engineering and Management Department, College of Engineering, University of Sharjah, P.O. Box 27272, Sharjah, UAE

Abstract: Ceramics industry is an integral part of any country's economic growth. Because of its competitive nature and wide range availability of ceramics, for both industrial and domestic consumers, it is important to have consistency in the quality of ceramics tiles. There are many defects identified in ceramics such as flatness, cracks, orthogonality, wrinkles etc. In this paper, many factors were identified during the firing process of production, which results in the convexity defect in tiles. A full factorial experiment that requires a total of 2³ experimental runs (treatment combinations) for a complete replicate was carried out to determine the factors that affect the convexity occurrence. Minitab software was used to carry out regression analysis, analysis of variance, and residual analysis. The results show that the main factors below roll and above roll temperatures along with their respective interactions with the direct air blowing significantly affect the convexity of the tiles. Model implementation shows 41% reduction in convexity defects.

Keywords: quality assurance; ceramics tiles; defect reduction; design of experiments; DOE; factorial analysis; ceramics industry; tile firing process; convexity defects.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIE.2013.057341

International Journal of Intelligent Enterprise, 2013 Vol.2 No.1, pp.46 - 63

Published online: 24 Jul 2014 *

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