TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Originally Printed in the October 2002 Issue of
Circuits Assembly
Magazine
LINKING THE FACTORY OFFICE TO THE FACTORY FLOOR
The correct documentation control system can increase productivity and quality while reducing costs.
Manufacturing
requires supporting documentation in a variety of forms. Documents often
include bills of materials (BOMs), design prints and sequence of events
lists, among others. Electronics manufacturing, in particular, requires
extensive documentation due to the nature of the product and process. An
electronics factory dedicated to a quality process might invest
significantly in managing assembly instructions, inspection aids,
quality specifications, preventive maintenance procedures, user manuals
and other documents.
In the past, individual software systems addressed different aspects of
manufacturing documentation. Tools existed for expediting the creation
of documents, controlling archiving and release, and delivering
documents to the factory floor through terminals. To address each of
these issues, manufacturers might select computer aided manufacturing
(CAM) software, a product data management system, a tracking system and
a paperless viewing system, and then attempt to operate them together.
However, electronics manufacturers found that these collections of point
solutions fell short of their expectations. Instead, they needed
collaborative operation. They needed scalability, ease of deployment and
maintenance, the ability to span factories, and systems that supported
future growth into a wide array of capabilities. The manufacturers
needed software that provided the integration, scope and technology used
in business software systems, but specifically designed to address
process issues such as manufacturing documentation rather than finance.
Recently, new software technologies and architectures merged these old
point solutions into one enterprise productivity software system that
meets the requirements. Documentation development, control and delivery
are key functions of such a system. This first article in a series
describes the business drivers for improved documentation, how
enterprise productivity software helps meet the challenge, and the
software technology behind it.
THE BUSINESS DRIVERS
Competitive advantage in today’s manufacturing is often delivering more
value with less investment. Factory output must increase while overhead
is reduced. Customers want continuously improved quality and also lower
prices. These seemingly contradictory goals are difficult to reconcile.
However, improving the way a company handles manufacturing documentation
can play a key role in meeting these challenges.
Consider the documentation costs incurred throughout the factory office
and factory floor. Manufacturing engineers spend hours on assembly aids,
engineering changes and paper-based release and approval cycles.
Configuration managers manually clean BOMs, organize approved vendor
lists (AVLs) and approved manufacturer lists (AMLs) and maintain
revision control. Quality assurance personnel maintain standard practice
manuals and quality manuals, and audit floor documentation. Quality
control (QC) personnel search documents for product information.
Now consider the less apparent costs of inadequate documentation.
Production supervisors lose valuable production time assisting operators
whose assembly aids are not adequate. If documentation lacks detail or
is difficult to access, operators must be more skilled and, therefore,
will require a higher labor rate.
Finally, consider an intangible cost. Existing or prospective customers
often consider high-quality documentation to be a barometer of a
factory’s ability to produce quality products. In this case, inadequate
documentation results in lost opportunity, which is likely the most
serious cost of all. At many levels, the development and management of
documentation are sources of manufacturing cost.
JOINING PREPARATION AND DELIVERY
By considering the scope and impact of manufacturing documentation on a
company, two main elements of an effective process management and
documentation system become apparent. The creation, archiving and
revision control of documentation is one element, and the process of
controlling the visibility of this information for those who need it is
the other. A Web-centric software system effectively addresses both
elements, delivering speed, control and visibility.
This system links preparation activities in manufacturing engineering to
access portals on the factory floor through electronic approval cycles,
all via browsers. These activities also act upon the same
enterprise-level database, thereby eliminating the human errors and
control problems associated with systems that use files instead of
databases.
Process, manufacturing, documenting and management personnel work
collaboratively to prepare and release information to the factory floor.
Simultaneously, factory floor operators have simplified access to
dynamic documentation that helps them do their jobs effectively, while
eliminating the overhead normally associated with managing such a volume
of information. The Web-centric system combines the functions
traditionally obtained through point solutions, joins them
collaboratively while introducing approval control, and makes the
resultant information accessible.
DYNAMIC DOCUMENTATION
Following the use of a Web-centric documentation system on the factory
floor is useful for considering the value such a system can add to a
company. First, because browsers provide access to the system on the
factory floor, deployment is automated and requires only reasonable PC
resources, also enabling the use of thin-client terminals to reduce cost
and management. Automated upgrade technology inherent to a Web-centric
system also results in zero maintenance for information technology (IT)
personnel.
With such a system in production, the first benefit provided is access
control. Determined by user rights, managers may have full access to
their company’s product documentation, but production personnel may be
limited to only the documents needed for a particular job, work order or
revision. Each terminal knows which documents are appropriate for that
point in the factory flow, and only presents the documents pertinent to
that operator at that position. Thus, a manufacturer can automatically
eliminate the risk of building products to the wrong revision.
The heart of a documentation system is the document viewer. In
enterprise productivity systems, this viewer is a Web browser,
presenting multi-pane, touch-screen views of the product documentation.
The main view shows multiple pages of the visual aids that the
manufacturing engineer designed for that particular process. Typically,
color-coded computer-aided design (CAD) images, notes, associated
graphics and drawing headers are present in these documents. However,
unlike paper documentation, this view includes component searching tools
and inspection magnifiers to approximate the process a QC or repair
technician conducts in a paper-based world, only more effectively. The
viewer makes part information, markings, AVL, AML and basic BOM
available easily. For box-build or very complex procedures, audio and
video instructions can provide maximum assistance to the operators.
A critical system function is storing associated documentation of any
type for immediate access. For example, personnel in manufacturing
engineering and quality control could construct a tree of documents and
then make these documents globally accessible, associated to only
specific jobs, available only at a specific machine, or provided only at
a particular operator station. These documents might include the
corporate quality manual, standard practice instructions, preventive
maintenance procedures, user manuals, specification control drawings, or
assembly and rework tutorial videos. The system provides a full range of
controlled information without introducing any additional management
burden.
A Web-centric system also helps manage operator suggestions and
communications on the factory floor. The system includes basic messaging
from line operators back to any administrative user for feedback or
notification of problems. Finally, product documentation can be sent to
managers and customers via the same mechanism used by the line
operators. However, the system presents a different user environment to
the managers and customers, filtering the information access either more
or less thoroughly depending on rights. The core benefit of a
Web-accessible system remains: visibility to detailed information when
and where it is required, even if this visibility is beyond the factory
walls and out to customers.
THE WEB SERVICES ARCHITECTURE
Terms such as Web-centric, Web-enabled and collaborative are often
applied to current software programs (Table 1). When a company
researches manufacturing software systems, having a working knowledge of
the technology is helpful so the differences between marketing and
technology can be ascertained.
First, consider the variety of software programs that claim to be
Web-based or Web-enabled. For example, a program that generates an HTML
page or a report viewable in a browser can claim it is Web-enabled.
Software that relies on Web collaboration tools from secondary vendors
can also claim collaborative capability.
However, a distinct difference exists between these programs and a true
Web-centric system. A Web-centric system has a core of Web-services that
perform most of the "thinking" at the server level. The points of the
system touched by users, the client side, are relatively simple and are
divided cleanly from the server- side components.
As compared to a system that sends HTML reports or uses a third-party
collaboration mechanism, a Web-centric system channels all user requests
with XML, through browsers or client applications, using the Web
services on its servers. The result for end users is a system with the
abilities and "feel" of a PC-based application rather than a Website,
even though access is through a Web browser.
Only a Web-centric system gives the user this familiar, interactive
experience, combined with enterprise deployment capability. This
architecture allows the server and its databases to meet any demands and
keeps the system distributed, allowing it to expand. This expansion may
be a multi-factory deployment, easy third-party customization and
integration, or seamless integration of more functions and modules in
the future.
Architecture often makes the difference between a successful, easily
maintained system and one that becomes a costly endeavor for its owner.
Two software systems with identical capabilities on paper can have
entirely different performances due to their architectures. Although
manufacturers certainly cannot become software design experts to
evaluate such systems, they must realize that architecture is objective.
If the manufacturer asks some real questions, the software vendor must
provide evidence of scalability and distributed design.
CONCLUSION
Document control and delivery, as part of an enterprise productivity
solution, has introduced new opportunities for manufacturers. The
correct documentation control system can increase productivity and
quality while reducing costs.
The second article in this series, to be featured next month, will focus
on product tracking and visibility. This article will discuss new
computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) technology that provides global
control and recall of work-in-process (WIP) plus diagnostic and
decision-making capabilities for improving product quality.
Author Information:
Jason Spera, Chief Executive Officer
Aegis Industrial Software Corporation
220 Gibraltar Road, Suite 100
Horsham, PA 19044