SEM before SEM: a series from industrial practice

Over the next few arti­cles, I will revisit injec­tion mold­ing projects from our work at IKAR Solu­tions and show how we inves­ti­gated the prob­lems, chose inter­ven­tions and checked their effect.

Across more than 200 com­plex indus­trial projects, this way of work­ing devel­oped into SEM, the Strate­gic Engi­neer­ing Matrix. The ear­lier cases are mapped to the method ret­ro­spec­tively.

The series fol­lows the work from the com­po­nent to the cus­tomer meet­ing. We start with a two-cav­ity cover: a mea­sured weight plateau, per­sis­tent sink marks and a sec­ond mech­a­nism at the gate. The case shows how the find­ings led to dif­fer­ent inter­ven­tions, each requir­ing its own ver­i­fi­ca­tion.

Then we use SEM Desk­top to show how mech­a­nisms and find­ings are orga­nized in a matrix, how inves­ti­ga­tions can run in par­al­lel, and how interim, robust­ness and opti­mal solu­tions are assessed within the pro­duc­tion con­text. In “Com­mu­ni­cat­ing with SEM”, we turn that anal­y­sis into infor­ma­tion that project man­age­ment, qual­ity and the cus­tomer can use: the basis for the deci­sion, its ver­i­fi­ca­tion, the remain­ing risk and the next step.

These are also the skills we teach in SEM Acad­emy. Through­out the series, the cases show what apply­ing them involves.