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TECHNICAL ARTICLE

Cover Story for SMT Magazine in May 2001
 

DEPARTMENTS, FACTORIES, CUSTOMERS AS ONE

TransCollaborative Manufacturing (TCM) Software allows for a smooth flow of information, even in enormous manufacturing endeavors, by connecting people, resources and facilities in one integrated process.

To compete in today’s fast-changing, competitive electronics industry, manufacturing enterprises must operate at a scale that is compatible with customer demands. But as they grow, they must also improve the flow and usefulness of manufacturing information. These requirements exist within a single factory, but more critically across multiple factories. Unfortunately, increased scale and information efficiency are often mutually exclusive, as information can slow and become less reliable as a company increases in size.
In a common example, prototype labs or work cells introduce products, change product versions, and change processes very quickly because they are small and have fewer control requirements than a production facility. Responsiveness is excellent because the people close to the process are also close to the design department and the customer. However, small labs lack the production efficiencies that come with scale.

Conversely, production facilities, and especially multi-site enterprises, have the efficiencies of scale for manufacturing product, but lack the pre-production efficiency and quick-change benefits of the prototyping labs. Engineers are more separated from design departments, customers, and other factories, but must work under stricter process and product data management controls.

Further complicating matters, enterprises using both prototype/low volume production environments as well as medium/high volume environments have difficulty moving manufacturing information from one environment to the other.

A world-class manufacturing enterprise requires the speed of a prototype lab in information preparation, engineering changes, and process alteration across many separated departments, factories, customers, suppliers, and auditors. It also requires complete control of its manufacturing information, in order to facilitate data preparation, engineering changes, and assembly without compromising product quality.

To deliver these advantages, a new class of software allows multi-departmental and multi-factory enterprises to operate as if they were one tightly integrated facility, with their customers and auditors on-site. TransCollaborative Manufacturing (TCM) Software acts as a central portal to all manufacturing information, through which multiple people, departments, factories, and even external parties can act upon the same information simultaneously in the effort to release product to manufacturing in the fastest and most reliable manner.

TCM systems combine traditional CAD/CAM for manufacturing data preparation and process development, web-centric product data management, and web-centric manufacturing execution benefits into a single manufacturing software solution.

TCM USE ACROSS THE GLOBAL ENTERPRISE
The impact of TCM can be illustrated by following a sample flow of information from receipt of a new product to be manufactured to completion. The following sections follow a typical new product introduction through a TCM system for a multi-factory contract assembler utilizing an engineering center and satellite factories.

Product Data is Received —
A configuration manager receives a bill of materials for the new product in the engineering center. The Bill of Materials (BOM) is imported through a TCM portal, cleaned of errors, and placed into that particular customer’s revision management tree. The manager then indicates through their TCM portal that the BOM is ready for approval. The system automatically correlates company standards to the required parties for approval, and sends e-mails and/or pages to the appropriate parties.

The Process is Developed —
While the BOM is being processed, manufacturing engineering receives CAD information in another engineering center and uses their TCM portal to define the manufacturing of the product. They identify the target factory, optimize sequence of events operations, create machine programs, automatically generate visual aids, and associate pertinent supporting documents. When finished, this engineer posts the process for approval and the TCM system issues another set of notifications.

Electronic Approvals Begin —
The parties receiving notifications log onto their web browsers and review the process and BOM on-line. They can decline or approve, and send comments back to the responsible engineers electronically, if desired. The process repeats itself until both the BOM and process are approved.

The TCM server now issues another set of notifications to personnel in the target factory in which the product will be manufactured, and perhaps to the customer. This is the final tollgate that must be cleared before the product is considered released. This affords production foremen and planners in remote sites final input on whether the process is suitable for their particular factory, since it might have been developed at a remote engineering site, such as in this example. This process also may iterate, but, when cleared, the product can be issued to a work order and job to begin production.

Manufacturing Executes —
In the remote factory, the product is now available for production without any need for transfer. When approved products are to begin production, an automated setup and execution system initiates the process. When a product is scanned or entered on the factory floor, the system presents pre-production checklists at selected terminals to ensure the assembly lines are ready. This might prompt operators to check for the appropriate stencil, solder paste type, proper feeder loading, etc. These checks are displayed through browsers, and operators must confirm they were completed before production may begin.
When setup is complete, the browser portals at each station display a single environment through which documents are displayed, the on-line quality manual is accessed, sequence of events operations are presented, and even WIP and quality collection activities are conducted. The user interface is both touchscreen and mouse-compatible. The system guides products through production based on user-defined logic trees and quality conditions. Through serial number or date-based transition points from one revision to another, the system presents only the proper revisions to users. Effectivity tracking is therefore completely automated and reliable.

Auditors and customers may now monitor product tracking and status, quality information, and any other information within the TCM system that the contractor wishes them to access. This access is achieved through normal web browsers and over the Internet, eliminating the need to install special software on floor terminals or at remote access sites.

TRANSCOLLABORATIVE MANUFACTURING BENEFITS
Due to its expansive architecture and the varied ways it can be applied within a company, TCM has virtually no limit as to its positive impact on a large, multi-departmental or multi-site manufacturing enterprise. The following are major benefits TCM enterprises enjoy:

Inter-Factory Portability —
Process information is accessible from any factory, and products can be produced in any factory without need for redundant manufacturing engineering work. The system maintains a global library of virtual factory layouts for each site. These layouts are intelligent and control assembly machine libraries, WIP interaction, data collection, etc. Most important, they offer a graphical and intuitive means of managing the processes of unlimited factories and targeting products to appropriate factories for production.

Collaborative vs. Linear Operation —
A TCM system allows users to work simultaneously upon the same product information or engineering change in an effort to move data to production as quickly as possible, without having to be in the same location. Traditional systems are linear in operation and site-specific, requiring a sequence of operations such as CAD import, BOM import, process development, etc. through a single application. TCM allows these activities to occur in different departments or factories on the same project, at the same time. Access to TCM portals is divided among common departmental lines, such as manufacturing engineering, configuration management, production management, etc. This design allows each user to interact with an interface tailored to his or her needs, but does not burden them with functions with which they have no involvement.

Product Data Management —
BOMs, processes, and revisions of all products need central control, but also global access. TCM maintains a global tree structure of all products and subassemblies under revision control, but manages revisions differently than traditional Product Data Management (PDM) solutions. TCM systems define both BOM revisions and additional revisions associated with the manufacturing process required to transform that BOM into a product. This additional level of control tracks not only configuration changes, but the changes manufacturing engineering introduces to the process. This control system facilitates and tracks the manufacture of the same product in multiple factories with different processes.

Shared Manufacturing Information —
Information is centralized to eliminate transfers, redundancies, and errors through the use of only one data source, usually a single Oracle or SQL Server database or a distributed network of replicated database servers. TCM systems eliminate redundant data sources in separate systems or even factories. Rather than data “exchange” between facilities, TCM offers central data “visibility” to one core repository of information. This eliminates synchronization, data portability, and management issues associated with exchange-based systems.

Engineering Change Automation —
TCM speeds the introduction of new products by greatly facilitating engineering change orders (ECOs). Since the system knows the prior revision of all products, it can replicate this prior revision, broadcast changes throughout the replicated revision, and then disseminate this information for immediate electronic sign off.

Product Tracking and History Recall —
TCM offers global control of Work In Process (WIP) and the ability to recall tracking data on any product, as required. Product flow can be dictated from a process engineering center while production is carried out in a remote site. Tracking the effective date or serial number of each product revision (or effectivity) is automated at the factory level. Production is scheduled through work orders with multiple job releases; there is full recall of upper level assembly as well as all subassembly information for any given product, including quality history.

Customer / Design Engineering Visibility —
Customers or design departments can be given access to production documentation, procedures, and production data from the tracking system, over the Internet.

Remote ISO Auditing —
TCM offers auditors remote access to the full scope of manufacturing information via their browsers, through a secure channel. This reduces travel expenses and the disruption of operations during audits.

Quality Assurance Support —
TCM offers reduction of quality assurance overhead through an on-line quality manual, centrally maintained, but globally available. This manual is never out of rev and supports multimedia as well as more typical written and graphical documentation.

Continuous Quality Improvement —
Processes are actually improved, not only through quality data collection, analysis, and rework automation, but through the body of intelligence, built by the TCM system, of corrective actions and their affect on process.

Personnel Allocation Assistance —
TCM systems maintain global user accounts which track the training certifications held by operators on equipment, processes, and chemicals. This helps production planners to ensure that proper personnel are assigned to the appropriate activities.

Preventive Maintenance Scheduling —
TCM assists facilities management personnel with Preventive Maintenance (PM) scheduling and tracking.

THE FUTURE OF TCM
The structure of TCM and its central and unified storage of vast amounts of manufacturing information provide a solid roadmap for future development. TCM will expand into producibility analysis based on past performance, adaptive line and factory optimization without a need for libraries of performance data, and complete production scheduling. The expansion possibilities for third party and customer-developed applications are endless.

THE SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY OF TRANSCOLLABORATIVE MANUFACTURING
TCM technology is very much a response to the demands of modern manufacturing, but it was made possible by several relatively recent technological advances. The convergence of Internet and key software development technologies, the proliferation of PC’s in the factory, and enterprise database technology have only recently made systems of this capability and scope possible. When considering the technology of TCM, it is not so much a matter of what the system provides, but how it provides it. Individual manufacturing software systems, taken in combination and integrated through third-party links, can approach some of the functions of a TCM system. However, a multi-vendor solution cannot offer the integration, ease of use, cost-effectiveness, support, and IT maintenance benefits of a singular system.
A TCM system consists of several “portals” or entry points to the system, through which users simultaneously perform departmentally segregated tasks, dramatically increasing throughput. (Figure 5)

Global Information Server —
This is the intelligent core of the system, linked to a single database containing all system information. Data is not stored via linked files, which introduces management problems and also compromises the ability of the system to dynamically access real-time information about individual jobs, design data, etc. Rather, everything the system needs exists in a relational database, making TCM architecture truly open to dynamic external access.

Process Engineering Portal —
Process and manufacturing engineers use this portal for importing CAD data, developing routing, developing assembly and inspection documentation, and programming assembly machines. It prepares all information required to transform the BOM (being processed simultaneously elsewhere in the system) into a finished product within a selected factory.

Product Data Management Portal —
This portal provides flexible import of virtually any incoming BOM format, or extracts BOM information directly from ERP links, databases, etc. It assists the cleaning of BOM errors and compares BOMs to CAD files and other BOMs, if necessary. It manages multiple customer databases against centralized part number databases and archives approved vendor and manufacturer lists. Most important, this portal is the full product revision history control of the system, organizing and presenting unlimited levels of BOM revision, as well as process revision.

Electronic Approval Portals —
Common web browsers accessed anywhere present users with the process and BOM data for review when approvals are necessary to release a new product. These portals allow users to collaborate by declining and issuing reasons why, reiterating the approval process, and so on. They expedite the release of new versions to the floor and subsequently offer complete history of the approval cycles for future auditing.

Manufacturing Execution Portals —
These browser portals operate at each station on each factory floor. They provide factory personnel an environment in which to display documentation, view on-line quality manuals, collect data, display analysis, assist repair, confirm pre-production setup tasks, track WIP, perform PM, and even view company bulletins. Managers use these same portals to access the production and quality information they require.

Extra-Corporate Portals (Auditors/Customers) —
Through their normal web browsers, auditors and customers are granted secure access to specific data for remote review. Auditors review all documentation, approval histories, etc. Customers monitor product quality as well as production information.

System Architecture —
TCM systems are built upon n-tier architectures allowing total scalability as the implementation grows across factories. This method of building enterprise-level solutions spreads the processing activities of the system across many “tiers” of software, making it reliable and distributable across multiple servers as the need arises. TCM is also truly web-centric, in that the system is fundamentally designed to be accessed via browsers over the Internet; a technology significantly beyond “web-enabled” which usually comprises only HTML report capability.

TCM solutions are also completely built upon COM (component object model) technology. This software development technology brings true modularity to large-scale systems. The benefits of this technology for the end user are significant. Most important, it makes the system open at both a data and functional level. Much more than a simple “API” as many systems employ, a completely COM-based system is fundamentally open rather than just offering a set of external commands that can be accessed for specific operations or data. TCM systems built on this technology offer unlimited possibilities for their user for custom software integration and expansion through these inherent interfaces. Integrating through these COM interfaces is also completely safe, as opposed to direct database interaction, in that the data structures can change and the custom integrated solution will continue to work normally, insulating the third party from recurring engineering costs. COM also allows the vendor to answer customer requests for enhancement more reliably and more quickly. It makes upgrades possible to individual sections of the system without interruption to system operation or even installation programs, making maintenance easier.

CONCLUSION
The most fundamental purpose of a TCM system is to connect existing people, resources, and facilities of a manufacturing enterprise into one, integrated process. This connection is collaborative, and allows the different elements of an enterprise to interact most efficiently, share information, and transform manufacturing data into product as quickly and reliably as possible. It is a technology that turns distributed manufacturing resources into a single, more competitive entity.
 

Author Information:
Jason Spera, Chief Executive Officer
Aegis Industrial Software Corporation
220 Gibraltar Road, Suite 100
Horsham, PA 19044