My name is Ivan Mendez, I own a small company in Mexico representing a reputed french manufacturer of packaging machines (KALIX SA www.kalix.fr). Recently we won a contract with AVON in Mexico for the supply of one machine that will perform the filling, capping, and labelling of Mascaras (cosmetics) at a production rate of 3000 products/hour. The machine will perform:
Filling of a specific volume of cream in a plastic tube (in ml)
Capping of "brushes" within a torque range in (lb/in^2)
Apply 1 label in a specific position of the finished product (in mm)
AVON is requesting as criteria to accept/reject the machine, to do a test run of 1hr(3000 products) and verify the resulting products using MIL-STD 1916. Although we are confident on the "ecellent" performance of our equipment, we are reluctant to accept these condtions, as we have many doubts:
-Isn't the standard designed to evaluate finished products rather than the "Tools" to produce them?
-Wouldn't a different technique such as SPC Charts , better demonstrate that the process has a deviation (or is "Out of Control") that can be imputable to our system?
-As our machine uses plastic tubes , brush caps, and labels manufactured from differnt suppliers, wouldn't AVON be forced to guarantee/demonstrate that these components have passed MIL-STD 1916?
-Do you know if the standard "MIL-STD-1916" is being used in the US "civil" industry as a criteria to accept/ reject Machines of any kind?
I'm an electronic's engineer, but unfortunately have very little experience on Quality/ statistics, and I would therefore very much appreciate your comments on this subject.