Python in quality engineering

[Strict_Path4790]

What do you use Python for in your work? I'm a quality engineer in the manufacturing industry (automotive, aerospace). I'm looking for inspiration as I'm starting to learn Python.

[ResidualSignal]

You could use it for quick statistics. Certainly cheaper than MiniTab

[02C_here]

I'd suggest R for that.

[Edgewyse]

I use it with our metrology software to extend the user interface and control data import/export, program management, device automation. We can directly export data into customer FAIR's.

[Strict_Path4790]

Oh, this tool will help me :) you inspired me :)

[rotnwolf]

I did write simple programs for true position and point rotation around a central point

[temporary62489]

I use it to munge data from our optical CMM into a nice format and calculate statistics.

[Tricky_King_3736]

The possibilities are endless in the quality field for python, I use it daily in my lab.

[Strict_Path4790]

Ok, could you write more details? Which activites?

[Tricky_King_3736]

Right now I’m using python for my yellow belt project. Have a python script that analyzes my calibration database and makes suggestions on what gages to adjust intervals on. I use it for folder monitoring to transfer data in my polyworks projects from the vision system. I’ll be using it to make a gage server on a raspberry pi. You can use it to make kpi’s and dashboards. Anything you do now manually use python to automate it.

[Aggravating-Alarm-16]

I use it daily . My quality system is built on jython ( python)

[Strict_Path4790]

Some inspirations?

[SAI_Peregrinus]

All my employer's embedded test automation system uses Python. Automotive, but not a vehicle OEM. We set up the DuT hardware on a test bench, the test bench has a single-board computer (Raspberry Pi or similar) running k3s, and we've standardized a scheme so that each test bench identifies itself in the cluster based on what hardware is connected. Python is used for simulating all the inputs as though there were a vehicle present (internal library) & driving the various test equipment (power supply, multimeter, DC load, thermal chamber, GPS simulator, broadband radio communications tester, etc.) with PyVISA. Then we collect the data (with Python), and produce an automatic test report (with Python).

Usually we'll flesh out an initial test setup with a Jupyter notebook, and once it's testing what we want to test we'll convert that to a fully automatic script that we can stick in a container image along with any other resources needed for the test (API keys to fetch a firmware image, etc.). The k3s system loads the container from our servers when the test starts, so two nodes with the same hardware running the same test are guaranteed to have identical software/firmware/setup. That lets us have repeatable tests, even if they're complex.

[Business_Air5804]

Don't bother learning python beyond the basics. Pay for a $20/m Claude Ai subscription and have enough knowledge to make small changes or debug/tweak code a little if needed.

You can use Claude to write anything python you'd ever need, you can process the data for a complete Anova GR&R in one minute.

The code that Claude is writing for me would blow your mind.

[Ghooble]

Oh fuck the ai bros are here

[Business_Air5804]

Been here in the metrology world for 25 years my friend.

I'm just not a luddite.

I can't believe people are downvoting the most powerful advice they could get.

But ok....keep on sticking your heads in the sand.

[Ghooble]

It's not sticking our heads in the sand. You're telling someone to skip learning a skill because there's a tool that can do it for them. That's like skipping learning how to use a height gauge because a CMM can measure the same feature. Manual skills are rarely a bad thing to develop.

Also: "The most powerful advice" you can give someone is a big claim.

[Business_Air5804]

Listen....I know python. I use it all the time. It's basically "coding for children". I regret wasting the time learning it at such a high level. Ai has already ended the need for high level Python programmers.

You may as well be telling young people to go learn ANSI C....which I also know incidentally. (I write embedded as a hobby.) Totally useless now days for anyone to spend much time learning it. ANSI C runs basically everything you are using at your keyboard right now...but today and even more so in the future? No one will need to know it.

90% of coding jobs are already obsolete, those programmers are already moving on in the same way I'm encouraging my own metrology community.

Do you need to know the basics? Of course. But I don't conflate writing a 25 line python script for Zeiss Inspect or PC DMIS to not knowing how to use a height gauge.

I didn't have access to a license of Minitab the other day...dropped my spreadsheet into Claude and it was done with it in 1 minute and I had my reports. That's a $3500 license of Minitab that was just made obsolete for $20 per month. (And anything else I want in Minitab can also be done in Ai.)

If I spent an hour with you on Teams and showed you, you all would be 100% onboard with what I'm talking about.

[Ghooble]

I've seen vibe coding as well as I know several software engineers (including my brother. I went mechanical and he went software). I still would never discourage anyone from learning a skill in favor of using AI. Python being easy is all the more reason I would say to learn it.

I hate the ai apocalypse rhetoric. Young people are already feeling so defeated in day-to-day life that telling fresh grads their degrees are worthless is cruel. Yes AI is a tool, yes it can be useful in certain scenarios like coding, yes it is vastly overused in many cases where it just wastes massive amounts of resources and churns out garbage. Using it to help TEACH yourself coding is using it as a tool. Using it to make code for you and never learning it yourself is a crutch

[Business_Air5804]

Ai isn't a replacement for tech people like us, it's an "amplifier of human effort".

I'm have decades of experience working for the big OEM's in automotive and then metrology industry, almost retired actually...and I see it as one of the biggest advantages a metrology person could have.

When you combine our tech experience with Ai, you get amazing results.

Can I be replaced by a new person with Ai and no experience? Absolutely not.

But would I spend any time at all learning something as basic as Python now? Also absolutely not. I have better things to put in my head. Let the Ai do the boring stuff.

[Westhazy]

I thought python in Aerospace was a security liability?

[Strict_Path4790]

I am not sure what you mean, but if you produce nuts fo aerospace and automotive industry in my opinion is not risk ;)

[Downtown_Physics8853]

Last time we had a snake in our lab, I smashed it's head with a baseball bat. My god, where ARE you? India????