February, 2018 Continued from previous page
er companies, all of those vendors in the future will be required to develop a smart factory with all rele- vant documentation. Then Siemens took it a step further. Also, be-
cause the company’s vendors have other suppliers themselves, Siemens will eventually require all of its vendors’ suppliers also implement Industry 4.0 operations. This trend will likely trickle down from the
largest companies to the smaller facilities. With competition at an all-time high, factories that were successful in the past with only average perform- ance will probably not succeed in the future, with- out significant smart factory improvements.
Want to Do Poor quality is expensive. Low production
line utilization is ruinous. Unneces- sary electricity consumption is costly. The average manufacturing engineer spends 40 percent of his or her time looking for information. The smart factory can reduce production cost and improve productivity even in an environment with more NPIs, shorter production runs and frequent produc- tion line changeover. Smart factory technologies en-
able real-time production and process visibility in dashboards that are ac- cessible from authorized PCs and mo- bile devices anywhere at any time. Engineers make better and faster de- cisions. Alternatively, machines now make decisions without the need to involve a technician, as exemplified by closed-loop SPI and stencil print- er. The result is consistent quality, faster troubleshooting and human er- ror reduction. Factory engineers and man-
agers are like circus jugglers with hundreds of balls in the air at any given time. Complexity grows expo- nentially between different produc- tion runs, clients, job shifts, produc- tion lines, etc. The connected factory organizes all such tasks across the entire facility and supply chain, while verifying compliance and actu- al performance results. For EMS companies, there is yet
another motivation. Differentiation. Implementing smart factory systems separates them from their competi- tors with new capabilities that clients now demand. These include full process control, low risk of product lifespan failure, full transparency and easy access to traceability data, fast NPI, and fast ramp. Investing in the smart factory can be a move to win more premium orders.
Wade in or Take the Plunge? Converting a traditional factory
into a smart factory can be a high- risk project that requires significant capital. The entire company and all of its employees will be impacted. The alternative is to select a small seg- ment of the factory and move that to an Industry 4.0 level. When doing so, the company will encounter most of the speed bumps and challenges as- sociated with any Industry 4.0 proj- ect, regardless of scope. One example is the conflict be-
tween IT (information technology) and OT (operational technology). IT workers are responsible for the effi- cient, secure flow of data throughout a factory. This includes avoiding viruses, lost data and hacking, as well as backing up information. IT engineers are understandably conser- vative and protective of their domain. On the other hand are the OT
engineers, who want a complete rev- olution. They want machine-to-ma-
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Page 21 Smart Factory Technology is Not Only for Big Players
chine (M2M) connectivity, extreme levels of au- tomation, data analytics, robots, augmented real- ity, artificial intelligence, and more. But, they need the data to run on the existing IT infrastruc- ture.
Regardless of the scale of the smart factory
conversion, companies must decide how to safely and responsibly create new forms of data man- agement. Higher level management will most likely be necessary to sort out the conflicts be- tween IT and OT. Another example is M2M communication.
Closed-loop SPI and stencil printer operation has become very popular. Similar connectivities are popping up all over the factory, even between the thermal process, SPI and AOI. Communication protocols are being developed at IPC and through the Hermes initiative, but they are not yet widely
available. Any company investing in smart factory technologies must still work directly with equip- ment vendors to secure connectivity and compati- bility between their machines. The benefit of initially focusing on a small
segment of the factory is the the reduction of time and capital it takes to upgrade. The company will quickly decipher the learning curve in a lower risk environment. Once successful, the company will be well-positioned to convert the rest of the company at a faster, more effective conversion rate. Smart factory conversion is no longer limited to large companies. Eventually, even the most average fa- cility will be under pressure to upgrade. Contact: KIC, 16120 Bernardo Center Drive,
San Diego, CA 92127 % 858-673-6050 E-mail:
bjorn@kicmail.com Web:
www.kicthermal.com r
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