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The Paperless Factory Comes of Age
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
An evolution in CIM software fulfills its promise: An advance well beyond simple document viewing that combines the benefits of effective data preparation, electronic revision control and automatic engineering change dissemination.
By Jason Spera
The paperless factory, a production environment in which all information pertaining to the assembly of an electronic product is available online via a computer terminal, has been a luxury available only to large assemblers. Traditional systems typically were disconnected from a factory's revision and bills of materials (BOM) control systems, which compromised its potential as a truly dynamic manufacturing information portal. Recent developments in computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) software, however, have not only put those systems within the reach of many small to medium manufacturers, but also have made them a truly effective means of managing manufacturing data. Implementation benefits include faster times-to-market, engineering change agility and the quality advantages of having more and better documentation with tighter revision control.
Business DriversMarket competitiveness and quality-assurance issues drive the implementation of paperless factory technologies in the printed circuit board (PCB) assembly market. Manufacturers face increasing pressures to assemble PCBs faster than ever before so that new product introductions (NPI) are ahead of the competition. With the current high rate of engineering enhancements to existing products, together with stepped-up NPIs, manufacturing agility is critical.
Yet, color-coding of computer-aided design (CAD) printouts for assembly reference remains a tedious and time-consuming process often requiring specific personnel dedication. Additionally, there are time delays, risk of error and resource loss associated with such labor-intensive practices. The traditional approach to assembly documentation actually puts an assembly operator at a disadvantage because he or she still must seek out personnel and paper to resolve assembly or documentation problems. By contrast, an assembler in a paperless factory can quickly and easily access information above and beyond that available on a printout via an online viewer, saving much time and effort.
But customers expect more than just speed; they also want accuracy. The demand is for high-quality boards and comparable documentation. At times, customer quality demands take the form of a requirement to provide documentation of actual assembly processes. However, in most instances, ISO 9000 impells 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 such paperless factory technologies, manufacturers can automate a large portion of the ISO process and more easily achieve certification while eliminating the need for labor-intensive paper archiving and storage schemes.
Paperless Documentation EvolutionTo illustrate why paperless systems have become more effective, it is helpful to examine the evolution of data processing in an electronics assembly environment. In the past, the manual management of front-end data, including CAD files, BOMs, approved vendor lists (AVL) and engineering revision control required paper to sort and analyze often error-ridden data. Assembly operators 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 picture, most of those processes were expedited by individual tools to assist data preparation. While effective in developing the documents and other outputs for production, the tools generally failed electronically to 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 demand for speed.
Attempts at paperless systems often were not electronics assembly-specific and they simply displayed very "flat" images and instructions. Even systems specific to assembly lacked a revision control gateway to ensure proper document retrieval without operators to understand computers or file browsing. Moreover, they did not integrate with the factory's part numbers and product revision management systems. 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 for line operators to understand.
The CIM and viewer technology evolution largely has solved these issues. A 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. Finally, the new solutions benefit from several specific enhancements over earlier attempts to eliminate paper from the manufacturing floor. They now:
- Reflect 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.
- Provide convergence The plant floor viewing systems are integrated with the data preparation and product data management systems for electronic verification and revision control of the complete indented BOM, AVLs and the CIM documentation package.
- Leverage the operating system Rather than utilizing proprietary file formats and viewers, the new systems leverage the technological advantages of Internet browsers, Microsoft's Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) and the Internet backbone of the operating system. These enable the use of the Internet/intranet, multimedia instruction and third-party software integration to the CIM system.
Automated Assembly DocumentationIn helping manufacturers respond to NPIs, 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 these 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, eliminating 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 restricted electronically from accessing obsolete documents (unless working on field returns or other legacy product) because the software manages documents and board information against revision.
The viewer's ability to link to virtually any other file or application such as intranet documents, Internet sites and MS Office applications further expands system flexibility. 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 on corporate procedures since the digital method requires the update and maintenance of only one copy of each document for the entire enterprise. Centralization of all procedural, process and multimedia information for production radically reduces clerical and organizational overhead as well as the potential for human error.
The latest evolution of the paperless factory improves the speed and accuracy of manufacturing data development. The data are disseminated in an automatically controlled and instantaneous manner, thus providing a greater quantity and broader range of assembly aids while actually reducing overhead.
Infrastructure ImplementationAny manufacturer considering going paperless must consider the cost and nature of the computer and network required in addition to the software. A manufacturer can move to the paperless factory immediately or in steps. The all-at-once approach carries the advantage of eliminating paper from the factory floor. Facilities that are unprepared to place viewing monitors at every point in the process still can benefit from paperless 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 control printed output from outside the production floor, giving operators access to secure, up-to-date visual aids and documents.
Either approach enables manufacturers to provide production personnel with access to more information than paper permits, 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.
Thin client servers handling multiple terminals have 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 ImplementationThe implementation possibilities for paperless technology, with links to the Internet, intranets and other applications, are limited only by the manufacturer's needs (and imagination). But here are some capabilities a factory equipped with these systems can expect:
- Through the viewers, links to Internet or intranet act as gateways to virtually any other site, file or application. Clicking on a component automatically brings up the most currect specification control drawing for that part number. Or it can launch the vendor's Web site, automatically passing in the manufacturer part number for querying.
- Links to ISO documentation eliminate the need to provide associated data in physical form as well as paper procedural manuals.
- 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.
- Links to verbal instructions on various parts of a drawing or different drawing elements often can 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 increase accessibility.
ConclusionA 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 presenting to production, such as video, audio and interactive documentation. To remain competitive, assemblers are integrating the factory's data preparation, documentation development, revision control and viewer systems. These provide unprecedented agility with NPI and engineering changes, improve product quality, and keep overhead low in proportion to the volume of product and changes able to be handled effectively.
With the evolution of CIM assembly process and documentation software, the concept of the paperless factory has become more than an idea whose time has come. It has become a strategic deployment for PCB manufacturers that offers time-to-market and quality improvements for years to come. SMT
JASON SPERA, CEO, may be contacted at Aegis Industrial Software Corp., 2 Walnut Grove Dr., Suite 190, Horsham, PA 19044; (215) 773-3571; Fax: (215) 773-3572; E-mail: sales@aiscorp.com; Web site: www.aiscorp.com.