APPLICATION REPORT

QUALITY MANAGEMENT

Measures to conquer outliers

in spinning mills

THE STANDARD FROM FIBER TO FABRIC

T. Nasiou, R.Furter
October 2008
SE 626
THE STANDARD FROM FIBER TO FABRIC

Copyright 2008 by Uster Technologies AG

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a re-
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sion in writing of the copyright owner.

veronesi\TT\Schulung_Dokumente\QualityManagement\SE_SD-626_Measures to conquer outliers in spinning mills\SE_626.doc

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Contents

1 Introduction ................................................................................ 5

2 Attempts to conquer outliers .................................................... 5

3 Realization .................................................................................. 6

4 Results ........................................................................................ 7

5 Conclusion.................................................................................. 9

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1 Introduction
A significant difference between spinning mills and other industrial proc-
esses is the number of production positions. Most of the ring spinning mills
have between 20’000 and 100’000 ring spindles plus cards, drawframes,
combers, roving frames and winding machines. Therefore, there is a high
probability that a significant number of outlier bobbins are produced every
day. An outlier bobbin is defined as a bobbin which exceeds one or several
tolerance limits with respect to evenness, imperfections, hairiness, foreign
fibers, etc. The reason for outliers are production positions which are defec-
tive or worn out, mix-up of bobbins during the spinning process, contami-
nated raw material, etc.

Such outliers are the reason for many quality problems in fabrics and gar-
ments. Therefore, it is the intention of many mills to get rid of outliers as a
short-term or medium-term objective in order to fulfil a condition which yarn
buyers always ask for: To be a supplier who is able to produce yarns of
consistent quality without outliers.

2 Attempts to conquer outliers

It was the objective of the trials described in this paper to find the outliers of
a ring spinning machine and to eliminate the source of the quality problem.

The last machine in the spinning process is the winding machine. Since the
winding speed is very high (1000 to 1600 m/min), it makes sense to monitor
the yarn on the winding machine to minimize the number of sensors, and
the winding machine has to eject the outlier bobbins.

Quality characteristics such as the evenness, the imperfections, the hairi-

ness, have a “natural” variation which can be represented by a bell curve
(Fig. 1). Outlier bobbins have quality characteristics which are significantly
beyond the boundaries of the bell curve. Therefore, a warning limit can be
set which marks the boundary between regular and outlier bobbins (Fig. 1).

Back to normal
distribution

Outliers
Mean Fig. 1
Warning limit
Outliers handling

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3 Realization
The mill where the trials were carried out was a ring spinning mill with
60’000 spindles. They produce combed cotton yarns between Nec 30 and
Nec 120 ( 5 to 20 tex). Most of the yarns are exported.

The spinning mill is using laboratory instruments to determine permanently

the quality level of the ongoing production. The yarn which was processed
at the time of the trial was Nec 80 (7,4 tex), combed, 100% cotton. As a first
step the quality characteristics were determined in the laboratory (mean of
a sample of 10 bobbins):

CVm Thin -30% Thin -40% Thin -50% Thick +50% Neps Hairiness
+200%
11,4% 2423 360 25 56 155 3,50

At one ring spinning machine of 1008 positions all the bobbins were identi-
fied. Afterwards, the following process has started:

Definition of the alarm limits of the yarn clearer based on the mean values of the
lab system.

↓
One full doff of identified bobbins from the ring spinning machine was identified.

↓
®
The USTER QUANTUM clearer on the winding machine has ejected the bob-
bins which are beyond the warning limits.

↓
All the ejected bobbins were tested in the laboratory since the laboratory instru-
ments allow a more detailed analysis.

↓
Since all the bobbins of this ring spinning machine were identified, it was obvious
for each ejected bobbin at which production position the bobbin was produced.

↓
The laboratory operators produced an instruction sheet for the repair crew which
position has to be repaired.

↓
The repair crew had to repair the production position and had to confirm the
successful repair to the head of the laboratory.

↓
This quality circle had to be used for learning and improving.

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4 Results
Table 1 shows the results of all the ejected bobbins after the measurement
in the laboratory. Out of 1008 spinning positions, one doff, 45 bobbins were
ejected with the selected alarm limits of the yarn clearer on the winding
machine.

All the red figures have exceeded the alarm limits. Most of the red figures
are in the column of neps, and a few are in the columns of thin places and
thick places.

It is very important to keep neps under control, particularly when spinning

fine counts.

It was obvious in this case that the ring travelers may be the reason for this
high amount of nep counts.

After exchanging the ring travelers the same procedure was repeated with
the results in Table 2.

As a first trial it was decided to only keep the imperfections under control.
Therefore, limits were only defined for imperfections.

For the alarm limits the following levels were set:

Thin places -50%: 60 counts per kilometer
Thick places +50%: 140 counts per kilometer
Neps +200%: 375 counts per kilometer

These figures are experience values. If these alarm limits are exceeded, a
quality deterioration can be noticed in a critical fabric.

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Table 1 Check of outliers in the laboratory prior to Table 2 Check of outliers in the laboratory after the
improvements improvements

Explanation of abbreviations in the first column:

R= Right side
L= Left side
T= Thin places
TK = Thick places Quality characteristics which triggered an alarm on the winding machine
N= Neps

Example: L148N = Spindle no. 148 on left side defined as outlier by the winding machine because the
nep count was 837.5 (1/km). After the improvement the nep count dropped to 135.0
(line 7, table 2)

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5 Conclusion
This was the first attempt to detect and eliminate outlier bobbins on this
machine. Therefore, the number of outliers was rather high. Of course the
number of outliers per machine also depends on the level of the alarm lim-
its.

However, if this closed loop system is permanently used in a mill, the num-
ber of outliers will be drastically reduced. In the case mentioned above the
amount of outliers was 4%. After an introduction period of such a system
the amount of outliers should drop below 0,2%.

We recommend for low cost countries that the daily rate of bobbins which
have to be identified should at least be one machine, one doff.

With this minimum number of identified bobbins daily in a mill with 20’000
spindles it lasts 20 days to eliminate the outlier bobbins in the entire mill.
After this periods it is recommended to start with the first machine again.

A few bobbins did not exceed the alarm limits in the laboratory (Table 1).
This may be bobbins which came close to an alarm limit and, therefore, the
alarm was triggered in the winding room because the conditions are not
exactly the same as in the laboratory.

The replacement of the ring travelers has practically eliminated all of the
red figures (Table 2). It has to be checked in the second round whether the
two remaining red figures positions 260 and 461 can be eliminated as well.

In this evaluation the emphasis was on imperfections (thin places, thick

places and neps). Since most of the red figures were high nep counts, it
made sense to first replace the ring travelers. However, if the spinning
process affects other parameters (evenness, hairiness, etc.) it requires a
detailed analysis in the laboratory to minimize the repair time. For this pur-
pose the evenness diagram, the spectrogram for the detection of periodic
mass variations, the hairiness diagram, the strength, the elongation ,etc.,
can be analyzed.

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Uster Technologies AG
Wilstrasse 11
CH-8610 Uster / Switzerland
Phone +41 43 366 36 36
Fax +41 43 366 36 37
www.uster.com
sales@uster.com

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