Measurement Systems Analysis

A measurement systems analysis (MSA) is a specially designed experiment that seeks to identify the components of variation in the measurement.

Just as processes that produce a product may vary, the process of obtaining measurements and data may have variation and produce defects. A measurement systems analysis evaluates the test method, measuring instruments, and the entire process of obtaining measurements to ensure the integrity of data used for analysis (usually quality analysis) and to understand the implications of measurement error for decisions made about a product or process. MSA is an important element of Six Sigma methodology and of other quality management systems.

MSA analyzes the collection of equipment, operations, procedures, software and personnel that affects the assignment of a number to a measurement characteristic.

A measurement systems analysis considers the following:

  • Selecting the correct measurement and approach
  • Assessing the measuring device
  • Assessing procedures and operators
  • Assessing any measurement interactions
  • Calculating the measurement uncertainty of individual measurement devices and/or measurement systems

Common tools and techniques of measurement systems analysis include: calibration studies, fixed effect ANOVA, components of variance, attribute gage study, gage R&R, ANOVA gage R&R, destructive testing analysis and others. The tool selected is usually determined by characteristics of the measurement system itself.

Read more about Measurement Systems Analysis:  Factors Affecting Measurement Systems, ASTM, ASME, Auto Industry, Goals

Famous quotes containing the words measurement, systems and/or analysis:

    That’s the great danger of sectarian opinions, they always accept the formulas of past events as useful for the measurement of future events and they never are, if you have high standards of accuracy.
    John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.
    Joseph Featherstone (20th century)