Specifications (Oracle Quality Help)


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Specifications

Specifications define product requirements. You can use specifications to ensure that:

items produced internally conform to internal requirements

items shipped to customer conform to customer requirements

items received from suppliers conform to supplier requirements

For each specification you define, Oracle Quality allows you to specify:

a specification type -- in this example, an item specification

an item or item category

a specification subtype

a group of specification elements describing the item

specification limits for each specification element, with up to three different specification ranges

attachments for electronic documents, multimedia instructions, or images

Specification Types

Oracle Quality supports three types of specifications. The specification type selected -- item, supplier, or customer -- is determined by your business application. Item specifications can, for example, be used to define requirements for items without regard to the customer or supplier that may purchase or sell them. Conversely, customer and supplier specifications can be used to define the requirements for items sold to or purchased from specific customers or vendors respectively.

Specification Type Business Example

Item Specification For a given item, thickness must be 0.55 inches, plus or minus 0.002 inches; torque strength must be between 4.5 and 5.2; burn-in hours must be 48.

Supplier Specification Carbon black received from supplier Acme Corporation must be tested to ensure its particle size does not exceed 0.0026 millimeters.

Customer Specification Steel coils sold to customer ABC Corp. must always contain at least 1.5 percent molybdenum, 2.5 percent manganese, and have a tensile strength of at least 60.

Table 1 - 4. Specification Types

Specification Type	Business Example
Item Specification	For a given item, thickness must be 0.55 inches, plus or minus 0.002 inches; torque strength must be between 4.5 and 5.2; burn-in hours must be 48.
Supplier Specification	Carbon black received from supplier Acme Corporation must be tested to ensure its particle size does not exceed 0.0026 millimeters.
Customer Specification	Steel coils sold to customer ABC Corp. must always contain at least 1.5 percent molybdenum, 2.5 percent manganese, and have a tensile strength of at least 60.
Table 1 - 4. Specification Types

Specification Subtypes

Oracle Quality also supports specification subtypes. Specification subtypes are used to create more granular specifications. For example, if a different but similar supplier specification is required when a supplier ships from one location versus another, you can use specification subtypes to ensure that the correct specification is applied.

Specification Elements

Specification elements are the building blocks of specifications. Specification elements can be any data type but would most typically be numeric.

You create specification elements by adding collection elements to your specifications. You can also copy all specification elements from an existing specification. This is useful when similar items, suppliers, or customers require the same specification elements.

Specification Element Specification Limits

As you create specification elements, the specification limits, if any, are defaulted from the source. Specification limits include an acceptable target value as well as user-defined, reasonable, and specification range limits. The specification limits of a specification element can be updated as required.

Examples of specification elements their associated limits are as follows:

Specification Element Specification Limit Target Value or Range

Thickness User Defined Range: 0.55 +/- 0.002

Torque Reasonable Range: 45 and <52

Burn-in time Target Value: 48 hours

Table 1 - 5. Specification Elements and Limits

Specification Element	Specification Limit Target Value or Range
Thickness	User Defined Range: 0.55 +/- 0.002
Torque	Reasonable Range: 45 and <52
Burn-in time	Target Value: 48 hours
Table 1 - 5. Specification Elements and Limits

Uses of Specifications

Specifications and their specification elements make it possible to do the following:

prohibit the collection of data that lies outside the reasonable range of a specification element. Input that falls outside the reasonable limit range is rejected.

assist operators as they enter data. You can optionally display specification element specification limits as quality results are directly entered. You can choose to hide specification limits by setting the QA:Blind Entry profile option to Blind Entry On. Also, you can specify that the target value be automatically defaulted in when quality results are entered by setting the QA:Default Specification Target profile option to Yes. See: Profile Options.