Now look carefully at it, and ask yourself "what's missing here?". One answer; ventilation. So not only are they taking a standard "Dell" PC and presenting it as if it were something brilliant, but they're also putting it in a box that will dramatically shorten its useful life. Unless, of course, their goal is to "dual purpose" the PC for both computing and warming up the truck heater meals they just ordered online. Which, if I were living in North Korea, I'd consider trying.
Check out this link for some more delightful pictures of cutting edge military technology from Pyongyang. Although the word "fool" in Psalm 14:1 refers primarily to moral foolishness, I'm thinking that the principle is carrying over to how they're engineering their world, too.
8 comments:
Hi Bert, this is completely unrelated to your post, but if I asked you a question about MIL-STD-105E or ANSI/ASQC Z1.4-1993 statistical sampling plans, you you be able to help me?
Someone told me that everything I though I knew about sampling was wrong, and I need a sanity check.
Ray
Have at it. I promise to give you a better answer than North Korea makes computers.
Both are attribute specs--if you're measuring variable data, go to ANSI Z1.9 for much smaller samples--and 1.4 has largely superceded the MIL-SPC. Download the MIL-SPC (free) from www.everyspec.com, but definitely shell out the $100 or so for the ANSI spec, as that's what your customer should want to see.
OK, so if I am sampling at 1% AQL, Normal level, for a lot size of 25, we have traditionally used a sample size of 5. We have gone through innumerable audits over the last 15 years, and no one has questioned that number, or all the other charts we set up.
Now someone is telling me that the real number should be 13. He also says that number would be 13 even if we inspect at the Special Inspection level (1% AQL Level S2).
Ray; your colleague is correct, if I'm reading the spec correctly. The trick is that 1% AQL gets you to test E, which is 13 parts. Even that doesn't demonstrate 1% AQL until about the 25th error-free lot.
You didn't get flagged because ISO doesn't test to ANSI, but rather to your own specs. (yes, you can have a pretty awful operation and get ISO certified) And if the inspection is expensive, I'd suggest you control chart the inspection data to see where it points.
We had always read the chart so that if it said sample size A (2 pieces), we inspected 2 pieces. But his interpretation, which looks like it may be right, is that at the 1% AQL level, you then follow the arrow down to where the 0 1 is on the chart, and that is at E.
It was not just ISO audits, but also customer audits that didn't question our much lower sampling plans. Of course, we never said we were exactly following the MIL-STD-105 or the ANSI/ASQC standard. But it seems that most other people who read the charts interpreted it the way that we interpreted it.
The chart we follow is mostly used for incoming inspection, and there is very little evidence that we are suffering by inspecting at the lower rate. I am wondering if the philosophy behind the sampling plan isn't quite suited to our industry.
I'd be looking at product specs, your AQL, and your incoming lot size before walking away from Z1.4, to be honest. It sounds like you've got a routinely ordered part that the accountants and purchasing guys order in very small batches to reduce inventory without quite calculating the vendor's setup cost or quality's inspection cost.
(a scenario I saw a LOT at one of my former employers--I could send you a LinkedIn invitation and discreetly let you figure out which. You've probably bought some things I helped make)
what you fail to understand is that north korean technology is far advanced, and their pc's dont need ventilation.
Gino; I was suspecting that the laws of physics no longer apply in North Korea due to the skill of their engineers. :^)
Of course, we've got plenty of politicians here who are unaware of the laws of physics as well. Sigh.
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