Case Study: Preformed Line Products achieves smarter tolerance stacking with Lumivero’s @RISK

@RISK Helps Improve Manufacturing Efficiency for Preformed Line Products

Preformed Line Products (PLP) Australia, a manufacturer of cable anchoring and control hardware, faced a challenge with tolerance stacking. When combining parts like pultruded rods and springs from different specialist suppliers, traditional "dumb tolerances" led to frequent defects and rejected products. Their outdated method of arbitrarily splitting the allowed variation between vendors was inefficient and did not account for the different capabilities of each manufacturing process.

To solve this, PLP used Lumivero's @RISK software to create a sophisticated probabilistic model. By using statistical process control data from the vendors and the software's Goal Seek function, Lumivero's tool enabled PLP to calculate tailored, equitable tolerances for each supplier. This new approach resulted in a robust system with zero rejected products at incoming inspection and allowed PLP to optimize manufacturing requirements based on each vendor's specific capabilities.

Preformed Line Products

Phil Timbrell

Manager of Engineering Services