Read the following article and answer the question that follow: ROBOTS FAIL TOO Within the recent month, there have been two sudden robot failures on two different tools during a build cycle. Lisa, the manufacturing engineer, has notified Nick, supplier quality engineer, about the failures, assuming that the two robots have some bad parts. She has requested that the two robots be sent back to the supplier for rework, even though no root cause has been identified. But, it seems that such a move has caused some to question where the blame should be placed. OUR BUSINESS The IEM Company is a high - tech company producing customized Ion and Electron Microscopes. The applications of their products can be used in a variety of fields, from academia to high - tech industries. Their customers are given the options of customizing the product to meet specific process needs. The company's financial profile shows that their sales revenue last year exceeds $ 400 million. The company is currently upgrading their tools for the improvement in the imaging and wafer transfer system. This is required to help expand the market size and to meet customers' satisfaction. This upgrading project was executed and is now in its operational stage. WE HAVE A PROBLEM AND IT IS NOT OUR FAULT Nick: How do you know it was the supplier's fault? Is there a chance that we damaged them during handling or installation? Lisa: According to the Reject report, the technician said that the two robots were working fine for two weeks after installation. But then there were a few error lines such that the wafer transfer was stopped. Nick: We don't really know if it's the supplier's fault or not. If it is their fault, those robots wouldn't have worked for two weeks, would they? Lisa: True. However, anything is possible. I think we should send these machines back for them to check it out. Nick: We can't just send them back without a well - documented "potential causes" report. Lisa: We don't have time to do any tests or troubleshooting. They have the experts in their company who can test the robots to find out what's wrong with the machines. I suggest we send them back and save ourselves some time. Nick agreed with Lisa's suggestion. The two robots were sent back to the supplier for investigation. One week later, similar problems occurred on several other machines. The problem became so big that the issue was elevated to Donnie, a manufacturing engineering manager. Donnie asked Lisa to form a team to identify the root cause of the problem. Lisa agreed to put together the team to brainstorm the root cause and the next course of action. She promised to follow the following steps: goal definition, root cause analysis, countermeasures identification, and standardisation. Lisa called a meeting with Nick and the other two manufacturing technicians, Joseph and Ryan. The team was working to get a list of possible causes for the problem. As a normal procedure in the team's analysis, the first thing to do was to start fishbone diagram. Joseph: As a starting point, can we capture what actually happened before the error message showed up on the screen? Ryan: I don't really know what happened. I was just starting to teach the robot, following our procedure, but then the error message showed up. Joseph: That doesn't' make any sense. If nothing changed on the system itself, we shouldn't have gotten the error. There's got to be something changed on the system. Lisa: Let's start fish bone diagram for potential root causes of this problem. The team brainstormed using the affinity diagram method. The purpose of this exercise was to ensure everyone's input was captured during the process. They determined the amount of time to be spent on brainstorming, and then went through each idea that each member came up with. When going through each idea, they also decided whether those ideas were candidates for root causes. If any of the ideas did not make sense, they put them aside and noted them as "possible but not likely" causes. Once the ideas of potential root causes were laid out, they started their fishbone diagram by grouping the potential causes into larger categories such as Software, Mechanical, etc. The fishbone diagram would be used as a tool to communicate with upper management as well as field personnel showing all possible items that needed to be checked if and when the errors occurred again.

Potential Causes Possibility To Be Tested (Y/N) Robot's Firmware High Y Robot's Controller High Y Communication to Robot's Medium Y Controller System's PC Low Y Overall System's Low Y Communication System's Software Low N (if overall system's communication passes the test) Robot's Manual Controller Medium Y Robot's Cables Low Y Motion Controller Low Y Motion Cables Low N (if motion controller passes the test)