TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Originally Printed in the December 2000 Issue of SMT
Magazine
THE PAPERLESS FACTORY COMES OF AGE
An evolution in CIM software fulfills its promise: An advance well beyond simple document viewing tht combines the benefits of effective data preparation, electronic revision control and automatic engineering change dissemination.
The
paperless factory — a production environment in which all information
pertinent to the assembly of an electronic assembly is available online
via a computer terminal — has long been considered a “luxury” available
only to large electronics assemblers. Furthermore, traditional systems
were typically disconnected from the factory’s revision and BOM control
systems, compromising their potential as a truly dynamic manufacturing
information portal. Now, developments in CIM software have not only put
these systems within the reach of many small-to-medium manufacturers,
but have made them a truly effective means of managing manufacturing
data. Having evolved well beyond simple document viewing, the new
systems combine the benefits of effective data preparation, electronic
revision control, and automatic engineering change dissemination.
Implementation enables faster times to market, more efficient management
of engineering change orders, and better documentation, with tighter
control of revisions.
PAPERLESS FACTORY BUSINESS DRIVERS
Market competitiveness and quality assurance issues are driving the
implementation of “paperless factory” technologies in the printed
circuit board assembly market. Manufacturers face increasing pressures
to assemble PCB’s faster than ever before so that new product
introductions are ahead of the competition. With the current rate of
engineering enhancements to existing products, and the release of new
products, manufacturing agility is critical.
Color-coding of CAD printouts for assembly reference is a tedious and
time-consuming process, often requiring the dedication of specific
personnel. In addition to the time delays, risk of error, and resource
loss associated with this labor-intensive practice, the traditional
approach to assembly documentation actually puts an assembly operator at
a disadvantage because he or she has to seek out personnel and paper to
resolve assembly and/or documentation issues. Conversely, an assembly
operator in a paperless factory can quickly and easily access
information above and beyond what is available on a printout through an
online viewer, saving time and effort.
Customers expect more than just speed. They want it fast, but they also
want it right. Customers demand boards of high quality, and associate
good documentation with this quality. At times, customer quality demands
take the form of an actual requirement to provide documentation of
assembly processes directly. But in most instances, ISO 9000 drives the
need for well-controlled and accurate documentation. The standard also
requires the ability to retrieve accurate documentation to validate
claims made in the procedures. By implementing “paperless factory”
technologies, manufacturers can automate a large portion of the ISO
process, more easily achieving certification while eliminating the need
for labor-intensive paper archiving and storage schemes.
THE EVOLUTION OF PAPERLESS DOCUMENTATION
To illustrate why paperless systems have become more effective, it is
helpful to examine the evolution of data processing in an electronics
assembly enterprise. In the past, the manual management of front-end
data, including computer-aided design (CAD) files, bills of materials
(BOMs), approved vendor lists (AVLs), and engineering revision control
required paper to sort and analyze often error-ridden data. Assembly
operators have relied on paper and color codes as production references
for years. Standard procedures were kept in binders and required
constant monitoring to ensure their current status.
When CIM software entered the industry, most of these processes were
expedited by individual tools to assist manufacturing data preparation,
BOM cleaning and compares, and CAD data processing. These tools were
effective in developing the documents and other outputs for production,
but failed to electronically organize and control the results they
developed. In other words, the creation of useful manufacturing data had
been improved, but the means of disseminating it to the floor in an
efficient and revision controlled manner was lagging behind the
assembler’s demand for speed.
Attempts at paperless systems were often not electronics-assembly
specific and simply displayed very “flat” images and instructions. Even
systems specific to electronics assembly lacked a revision control
gateway to ensure proper document retrieval without the need for
operators to understand anything about computers or file browsing. They
often did not integrate with the part number and product revision
management system of the factory. The proprietary nature of the viewers
made it difficult for them to link to standard Windows capabilities such
as Internet/Intranet links, embedded MS Office documents, video, audio,
etc. These earlier systems also suffered from a lack of a global routing
system to organize their documents, which also made them difficult to
understand by line operators.
Evolution in the CIM side of the equation as well as in the viewer
technology itself have largely solved these issues. Recent convergence
of elements in the data preparation side of the software, the product
data management section, and the factory viewers have created systems
that fulfill the original promise of the paperless factory. The new
solutions benefit from several specific enhancements over early attempts
to eliminate paper from the manufacturing floor:
1. REFLECTS THE PROCESS: A digital and electronics-assembly-specific
routing backbone allows for the intuitive access and organization of
assembly data from beginning to the end of the process, while providing
uniformity to all outputs.
2. CONVERGENCE: The plant floor viewing systems are solidly integrated
with the data preparation system and the product data management system
for electronic verification and revision control of the complete
indented BOM, AVLs, AMLs, and the CIM documentation package.
3. LEVERAGE THE OPERATING SYSTEM: Rather than utilizing proprietary file
formats and viewers, new systems leverage the technological advantages
of Internet browsers, Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding (OLE),
COM interfaces, and the Internet backbone of the operating system. These
enable the use of the Intranet/Internet, multimedia instruction, and
third-party software integration to the CIM system.
AUTOMATED ASSEMBLY DOCUMENTATION BENEFITS
In helping manufacturers respond to new product introductions,
engineering changes, and quality assurance demands, paperless systems
provide specific production benefits. For example, the data preparation
section of the system imports and cleans data and automatically creates
assembly documentation, thus shrinking pre-production setup times
dramatically, and ensuring document accuracy. Even getting this data to
the floor is faster. Once electronically signed off and placed under
revision control in the product history tree, the production floor can
immediately access documentation from a computer viewer, without
clerical overhead to eliminate the documentation for the prior revision
from the floor.
The latest paperless systems also remove the risk of building to
down-rev documents. Personnel are electronically restricted from
accessing obsolete documents (unless working on field returns or other
legacy product) in a paperless factory because the software manages
documents and board information against revision.
The sheer volume of visual aids and assembly aids on the production
floor increases while the cost of creating and managing the visual aids
decreases.
The viewer’s ability to link to virtually any other file or application
such as PDF documents, Intranet documents, Internet sites, and MS Office
applications expands system flexibility even further. Quality engineers
can maintain centrally located specifications and procedures in the
corporate Intranet, for immediate access from the viewers. This method
far surpasses the maintenance of paper manuals with corporate
procedures, since the digital method requires the update and maintenance
of only one copy of each document for the enterprise. Centralization of
all procedural, process, and multimedia information for production
radically reduces clerical and organizational overhead and the potential
for human error.
The latest evolution of the paperless factory improves the speed and
accuracy of manufacturing data development, disseminates the data in an
automatically controlled and instantaneous manner, and provides a
greater quantity and broader range of assembly aids for operators. By
providing these benefits while actually reducing overhead, it positively
impacts the bottom line.
INFRASTRUCTURE IMPLEMENTATION
Any manufacturer considering “going paperless” must consider the cost
and nature of the computer and network required to do so, in addition to
the software itself. A manufacturer can move to the paperless factory
right away or in steps. Implementing CIM assembly process and
documentation software and installing networked viewing monitors at each
point in the process can achieve a paperless factory in a single step.
The all-at-once approach carries the advantage of eliminating paper from
the factory floor. Facilities that are not ready to place viewing
monitors at every point in the process can still benefit from “paperless
factory” technologies by taking the “print server” approach. By locating
printers, which are driven by the CIM software, at central locations in
the factory, manufacturers can use the software to control printed
output from outside the production floor, giving operators access to
secure, up-to-date visual aids and documents by controlling access to
print. Using a single “server” to support multiple areas in production
reduces costs.
Either approach enables manufacturers to provide production personnel
with access to more information than paper allows, such as dynamic part
querying and search capabilities, video, audio, and linked document
archival. The approaches differ only in the quantity (and cost) of the
terminals on the floor.
The use of “thin” client servers handling multiple terminals has made
the full deployment option more cost effective. Combined with the
ever-decreasing cost of computer hardware, implementing a paperless
factory is becoming a very reasonable and prudent competitive decision
for many assemblers.
SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATION
The implementation possibilities for such a system, with links to the
Internet, Intranets, and other applications are limited only by the
manufacturer’s needs (and imagination), but here are some capabilities
afforded a factory equipped with these systems:
1. Through the viewers, links to Internet or Intranet act as gateways to
virtually any other site, file, or application. Clicking on a component
can automatically bring up the most currect specification control
drawing for that part number, or launch the vendor’s site, passing in
the manufacturer part number for querying automatically.
2. Links to ISO documentation eliminate the need to provide associated
documents in physical form, in many cases eliminating paper procedural
manuals.
3. Links to digital video and audio instructions provide detailed
explanations for operations that are difficult to illustrate in
drawings, such as with final box build and mechanicals.
4. Links to verbal instructions on various parts of a drawing or
different drawing elements can often solve literacy issues on the plant
floor.
By linking additional files and applications to the CIM assembly process
and documentation system, there is no limit to the nature and volume of
tools and information available to the operators. Leveraging Internet
and Intranet linking provides a seamless way to centralize company
documents and make them accessible.
CONCLUSION
A fully online, paperless system achieves three important objectives: 1)
reliable revision control without incurring additional overhead, 2) more
efficient access to visual aids and supplemental information, 3) a
broader and better range of aids for production, such as video, audio,
and interactive documentation. To remain competitive, assemblers are
seeking the integration of the factory’s data preparation, documentation
development, revision control system, and viewer system. This provides
them unprecedented agility with new product introduction and engineering
changes, improves the quality of their product, and keeps their overhead
low in proportion to the volume of product and changes to product they
can handle effectively.
With the evolution of CIM assembly process and documentation software,
the concept of the paperless factory is more than an idea whose time has
come. It is a strategic deployment for printed circuit board
manufacturers, offering time-to-market and quality improvements for
years to come.
Author Information:
Jason Spera, Chief Executive Officer
Aegis Industrial Software Corporation
220 Gibraltar Road, Suite 100
Horsham, PA 19044