The Product Quality Development of Fiber Coupler

• Main Authors: Dirac Liao, 廖德銘
• Other Authors: C. T. Su
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/81405180621343666038

博士 === 國立交通大學 === 工業工程與管理系 === 91 === ABSTRACT The worldwide difficulties in fiber optical transmission industry these years are coming from various developing techniques and inconsistent specifications to the basic devices and components. Among numerous passive devices, the fused fiber coupler manufacturing is most difficult to be fully automated due to its physical interactions among optics, mechanics, electrics, and heat fusion. The product quality development of fiber coupler is a critical and challenging task. This study illustrates the progress of fiber coupler quality development and recommends two tools, reliability design verification and fusion process optimization approach, to ensure the product and process quality. The success of the implementation could be provided to those manufacturers as a useful reference to establish the coupler product with competitive advantages. The two tools for ensuring fiber coupler quality are reliability design verification and fusion process optimization approach. The former provides the conformity of the product by meeting the requirements in optical industry; the latter provides the competitive cost performance by significant improvement in production yield rate. This dissertation also deeply illustrates the procedures to optimize fiber coupler fusion parameters with three different approaches, i.e. (a) Taguchi methods, (b) neural network and exponential desirability function analysis and (c) integrated neural network, exponential desirability function and genetic algorithm analysis. This study demonstrates it could easily take place of traditional trial-and-error approach, to promptly fulfill the need of frequent specification changes from market. In summary, the outcomes from the third hybrid approach are superior to the first two approaches and it is also very suitable to solve the problems for parameter optimization in fusion process. Finally, this product quality development of fiber coupler is successfully demonstrated on a commercial passive optical communication company in Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park, Taiwan. The first illustration demonstrates product reliability by design verification. The result is encouraging that low optical performance variations has been observed under severe environmental testing as specified in optical industry. But it is unsatisfied that only 65% fusion process yielding ratio was achieved. The second illustration demonstrates process quality by parameters optimization. The recommended hybrid approach, (c), demonstrates that the exercised company not only obtain considerable yielding ratio improvement in fiber coupler fusion process from 65% to 99% but also gain supreme product performance and quality. In addition to above creditable advantages, the cycle time of specification evaluation for customized product has been reduced from 7~10 days to 1~2 days. All above evidences conclude to satisfactory results.