Driving Factory Digitalization: A Q&A with Cogiscan and EMS Future on the Future of Smart Manufacturing

How can manufacturers identify the areas where they can start small with digital transformation initiatives?  

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.

What are the key benefits of focusing on the most painful areas first when adopting new technologies?

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.

Can you provide examples of how manufacturers can implement digital transformation without a huge initial investment?  

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.

Could you share a real-world example where better material management led to significant cost savings for a company?

What role do smart software technologies play in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of operators on the production floor? 

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.

How do you ensure that a digital transformation strategy is scalable over time without requiring major infrastructure changes?

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.