Application of engineering and management principles to improve cotton's position as a quality raw material

In 2004, approximately 18.33 million bales of cotton were produced in the United States providing an estimated 400,000 jobs. One half of these bales will not be considered for use in high quality goods due largely to the inability to measure immature fiber content. The lack of a measurement technique creates a cost of quality problem and makes the problem unmanageable. The work resulted in the development of image analysis techniques that were used to create an operational definition of this defect. The research confirmed defects identified by image analysis were also identifiable as human visual defects by trained operators.