Driving Factory Digitalization Future of Smart Manufacturing

Start where it hurts – where you’re experiencing the most pain (where time and money are wasted) and scale back from there. Say, for example, changeovers are taking too long and you want to reduce that time to improve line up-time and overall efficiency. While it may seem overwhelming to consider the entire line, perhaps look at the machine with the longest set-up, your placement machine, and look at ways to improve that process specifically. Start with one line and one machine – perhaps it’s adding a SW tool to perform automatic validation of setup, instead of doing so manually – implement that for 45 to 60 days and measure improvements and lessons learned. From there, you can scale to other placement machines across the factory.

Even if your pain point is something bigger, like more precise inventory control, while this undertaking seems like a daunting task (electronics manufacturers manage hundreds of thousands of different components!), you can always scale to a more manageable level. In the case of inventory control, maybe it’s something as simple as looking at how inventory is picked in the stockroom – are locations identified easily for employees to find? Is the pick list sorted in a way that is sensical to the organization of the warehouse and the order of picking? Or even to how components should then be loaded on trolleys to feed the line? There are intelligent software systems that can help improve these tasks on a smaller scale and then expand as ROI is proven.

It’s really all about maximizing efficiency with what you have – we all know 2024 has been slower than anticipated for many electronics manufacturers, so while the top line may not be performing as expected, manufacturers can make minor digitalization improvements to positively impact the bottom line.

You get the biggest bang for your buck – you can typically feel the improvements faster. A small improvement on a MAJOR pain point will always feel better than a big improvement on a MINOR pain point. While it can feel less risky to tackle something that isn’t as big of a problem, the return often feels less rewarding and can typically take the same amount of time as a bigger pain point. You want most people in the organization, from the production floor to c-level management, to both see and feel the improvement, especially if digitalization improvements are new to the manufacturer.

Define a small-scale pilot project, sometimes called Proof-Of-Concept (POC) on one machine or one line. Use this project to assess the effort required to implement new technology and to calculate the ROI. Once you have something proven on a small scale, simply copy/paste on other lines/other sites to multiply the benefits with minimal risk and delays.

How can a smart Track, Trace, and Control (TTC) material solution help manufacturers improve their profit margins on orders that are already booked but not yet built or shipped?

One quick example is using a system to ensure you can maintain an uninterrupted production flow – keeping your line fed and running to maximize utilization and not waste time (read: money) waiting for components. This hinges on a proactive approach to inventory control rather than a reactive one that scrambles to address shortages as they arise.

To this end, a software tracking system is necessary, one that can issue precise, low-level warnings, or predictive production line stoppage alerts, to ensure that critical alerts reach operators and material handlers with enough time to take action, effectively addressing any potential stoppages that would hinder the production line.

The TrackTrace and Control (TTC) technology that underpins these warning systems, though often operating behind the scenes, is pivotal to maintain your manufacturing operations and ensures that you’re getting the most out of every second of run time (and the labor and material costs you originally quoted can be met or even improved.

Countless! Automation and smart software solutions are the ticket to reducing human-error, increasing productivity, and removing the mundane validation tasks that are prone to mistakes.

One simple example would be using software to validate the set-up of a machine prior to running production. Instead of doing this manually (with an Operator reading and verifying one by one that the right components are in the right slots), smart software can be utilized to automatically validate set-up across multiple different placement machine vendors – this not only saves time, but also enables Operators to perform multiple set-up validations simultaneously. This same solution should be able to interlock, or stop the line, if anything in the setup is incorrect. A standardized solution that can be used across different machine vendors is useful because it reduces Operator training time and allows for more efficient use during production – always switching to different platforms and screens can be arduous and slow.

Be cautious of systems that require an overhaul of what you already have in-place – instead, look for vendor-neutral software partners with an open architecture. You want to make sure that whoever you work with to help make digital improvements can fit within a bigger ecosystem and appropriately communicate and share information with both enterprise systems and machine vendor specific systems. It’s also important to ask questions about software application deployment methods including scalability practices when demand changes, when revision changes are made and how updates may impact production as well as recovery capabilities.

Don’t adopt technology for technology’s sake. Ensure that you’re using software to help improve a pain point, and that you’ve clearly defined how you want to measure those improvements.

One example of keeping things simple would bestarting with a standalone material or process control solution, which doesn’t immediately require integration to existing enterprise systems, but is flexible enough to do so.

For example, a traceability or WIP tracking system where both the PCBA part number and work order are entered manually at the start of a new production run, while during production, all PCBA serial numbers and detailed machine events are automatically captured via PFCs/barcode readers and/or via machine communication. This standalone system will collect, store and manage this data and can also later be integrated with an ERP or MES to automatically download and synchronize work order progress and material consumption.

Creation Technologies recently chose Cogiscan’s Material Control application to enable the precise tracking of material consumption for both procurement and production planning. The manual and time-intensive process of material picking in their warehouses significantly impacted overall efficiency, a critical aspect for Creation Technologies’ high-mix manufacturing environment.

By implementing Cogiscan’s Material Control application at seven different manufacturing sites, they were able to better streamline operations while enhancing material data accuracy. A pivotal component of their solution is the Cogiscan Open Interface, which establishes a seamless connection with Creation Technologies’ Oracle ERP system. Made possible by the Co-NECT integration with Creation Technologies’ Nordson X-ray counter – Creation Technologies’ Oracle ERP now automatically receives material consumption data on teared down materials in real-time, augmenting the accuracy of their inventory.

This implementation has helped to not only eliminate last minute material surprises but has also improved efficiency for Operators at Creation Technologies: “The automatic exchange of data between the Nordson X-ray counter and Oracle ERP system has helped the kit reconciliation process by bridging the gap between actual physical inventory and digital records. This has enabled Creation to improve inventory management to support production and eliminate surprise downtimes,” Kashif Farooqui, Creation Technologies Global Process Engineering Leader – CCA Operations Technologies and Operations Excellence.

One of the main drivers for implementing smart technologies is to drive better quality control across all manufacturing sites, including in-house manufacturing and contracted partners. OEMs are putting increased pressure on their main CM partners to better manage quality, and it no longer seems sufficient to deliver a product to spec, but these high-reliability OEMs want traceability and visibility into their CMs production processes in real-time. They’re making major investments in strategic partnerships to ensure their chosen manufacturer(s) can reliably and correctly produce their products for a very long time.

One of our recent announcements highlight this trend – SolarEdge Technologies selected the Cogiscan platform as part of their broader and ongoing quality enhancement initiatives, to better monitor, control, and improve manufacturing operations across all plants, including EMS partners. The Cogisan installation included data collection and contextualization from all machines, enhanced material and process control on the line, traceability reporting of the production process, as well as factory performance visualization dashboards.

Due to our 20+ years of installing TTC in a wide variety of manufacturing environments – we can get data out of any type of machine (regardless of brand or vintage) and get traceability reporting (coupled with analytics) done. OEMs can then effectively use that smart data to cross-pollinate manufacturing improvements across various sites to improve the overall quality of their product regardless of where it’s manufactured.

About Cogiscan

Cogiscan offers comprehensive and scalable solutions covering all levels of the electronics manufacturing ecosystem. With machine connectivity, process control and traceability, and data-driven analytics, we’ve got you covered from the shop floor all the way to the enterprise level, with iTAC Software AG’s Gartner recognized MES/MOM suite. No matter where you are on the road to digitalization, we have a solution for you.