Altech UEC is a leading developer and supplier of hardware and software solutions for the International digital pay and interactive television (iTV) industries. UEC specialises in the provision of integrated solutions comprising high quality, customised set-top boxes complemented by value added software solutions and supply chain and product life cycle support services.
In August 2011, the company opened Africa’s first high-tech global facility with the capacity to manufacture more than three million set-top boxes per annum. With demand in South Africa expected to reach more than nine million as the country migrates to DTT, with a further 30 million required for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, Altech CEO Craig Venter said the new factory would drive growth and job creation in line with President Zuma’s economic development targets.
An integral part of the new factory is the Manufacturing Execution System that aligns IT with production to ensure the following requirements are met:
* Time to market.
* Innovation.
* Manufacturing cost.
* Efficiency of hardware and software development processes.
* Ability to manage product data across global networks.
* Global engineering and supply chain collaboration.
* Managing a product driven development strategy within a strongly customer driven market environment.
Clynton Thoresson, manager of manufacturing systems at Altech UEC, “The Siemens Simatic IT MES solution will assist in achieving these objectives and at the same time manage and control the life cycle of UEC products, increase financial efficiency, facilitate development, minimise error and promote traceability by reducing work in progress, reducing downtime, reducing manual operations and reducing waste.”
“Simatic IT is a strategic platform that offers standard ANSI ISA-95 functionality in a flexible framework that can be applied efficiently to points-of-pain in all manufacturing operations,” says Gerhard Hattingh, business segment lead for MES at Siemens.
“Pre-configured applications such as Simatic IT for Electronic Assembly are available to address critical manufacturing issues without the need for detailed analysis and implementation phases. This innovative approach reduces the time-to-value of an IT initiative, whilst retaining the inherent flexibility of the SimaticI IT infrastructure. Such high-value building blocks can be combined to fulfil every individual need without compromising system architecture and a single point solution can be grown stepwise into a comprehensive MES. Finally, the library concept and abstraction layers in make it possible to standardise applications across multiple sites and implement MES solutions that provide fast return on investment and low total cost of ownership.”
Siemens value proposition
Simatic IT is the Siemens MES software offering for integrating production with management (horizontal and vertical IT integration) and optimising the workflow processes with manufacturing facilities.
The offering enables users to streamline manufacturing processes using a unique combination of fully configurable standards, compliant components and a flexible framework allowing the attainment of 100% of requirements.
Simatic IT is focused on:
* Interoperation with business level: enables connecting to ERP through standard and flexible interfaces.
* Visibility for fast decision making: extends its functionality with Manufacturing Intelligence applied to production execution.
* Time-to-market support: streamlines product specifications to manufacturing plants.
* Total quality management: covers all the aspects for consistent quality management.
* Full flexibility in production: provides a framework environment where functions can be modelled according to individual needs.
* Complete integration with the supply chain: designed to support the enterprise IT infrastructure with painless installations, ready for services based architectures.
* Driving excellence into the Manufacturing Enterprise: broadens the scope of MES to achieve excellence in production operations.
Electronic assembly challenges
In a production process with a lot of value in the components, the quicker the line stops assembling when facing quality issues, the more money is saved. Furthermore, if defects are discovered after manufacturing, a good recall strategy helps protect the company image. Genealogy is therefore key, because personnel need to know exactly which components from which lots are mounted on which final products. But, keeping track is a challenge due to the high volume of data (Bills of Material in this environment are very complex) and the high manufacturing speed. Quality and performance must be perfectly balanced to deliver the right quality at the maximum speed.
Electronic assembly requirements
There are many factors to consider when monitoring and controlling assembly procedures:
* Data management: the first challenge is the number of devices and interfaces involved in manufacturing an assembled product. The high throughput of modern machines means that this data arrives fast, sometimes in packages that must be interpreted and sometimes in real-time.
* ERP interoperability: interoperability with the ERP system is essential to ensure that the latest specifications are applied during the manufacturing operations. Feeding back production performance to the ERP is critical for QA/QC, CRM and many other business processes.
* Genealogy: this quality data must be combined with the execution history and the personnel, equipment and raw material used. This becomes the source of information for interlocking, decision support, product recalls and production reporting.
* Interlocking: collection and storage of production information is only the starting point. All records have to be quickly contextualised to the current production-lot and decisions taken fast. In fact, when a test machine declares that products are not passing quality tests, they have to be promptly removed from production to avoid wasting further components and production capacity on a product that may be scrapped anyway. Milliseconds are crucial and the MES must react at this speed.
Simatic IT for Electronic Assembly
This is the Siemens solution for addressing the manufacturing issues of an electronic assembly plant. In particular it reduces scrap products, improves in-line quality control, and provides full genealogy records. This is achieved with full interoperability with the ERP system. It is a complete solution based on the comprehensive Simatic IT platform and it can be seamlessly integrated in any installation without disrupting existing configuration.
Manufacturers also benefit from the innovative product design and implementation that leverages standard components with the highest level of reusability. This makes it easy to adapt the IT solution as automation changes, new products are introduced and legal directives become stricter.
The electronic assembly industry is characterised by large numbers of material lots moving at extremely high speed and generating vast quantities of data. Simatic IT for Electronic Assembly compiles the data from disparate shop floor systems into complete genealogy records for each lot produced.
Unlike the passive manufacturing systems found in many industries, this solution tracks the quality of each product as it races from machine to machine and performs the interlocking normally achievable only by heavily customised control systems, less than 100 ms after arriving at a new machine, Simatic IT has verified the history of the piece against its routing.
This history is combined with a complete list of assembled components to create a complete manufacturing record of each final product, ensuring that forwards and backward tracing can be performed and faulty material identified and quarantined in a targeted recall.
Simatic IT for Electronic Assembly improves profitability by reducing the scrapping of expensive components and by enabling a quick recall of products built with defective components. Productivity is improved by supporting real-time decisions on the plant-floor and by using equipment more efficiently. Its adoption has a positive impact on several aspects of the business such as:
* The number of scrap products is dramatically reduced.
* Overall equipment effectiveness is improved.
* The delivery cycle time is better controlled against non-conformity issues.
* Product integrity is guaranteed.
* Recall capability is consistently enhanced by online genealogy records.
* Real-time quality is continuously monitored and corrective actions are automatically scheduled.
* Production procedures are followed to improve ‘right-first-time’.
* Cost of goods manufactured is reduced.
* Quality control processes are continuously improved.
* ERP interoperability in both directions is guaranteed.
For more information contact Keshin Govender, Siemens Southern Africa, +27 (0)11 652 2412, [email protected], www.siemens.co.za
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