By: David Treier, Senior Systems Engineer
The Initial Setup
I was introduced to IW (IntelliWORKS MES) as a young manufacturing engineer at an automotive supplier in 2012. At this supplier, IW was initially used as a solution to control and organize the JIT (Just In Time) sequenced shipping of interior door panels directly to an OEM vehicle assembly line. The MES performed these tasks well; however, the supplier struggled with manual processes for scheduling and controlling production.
The Need for Upstream Organization
After the sequenced shipping operation successfully implemented the basic traceability and error proofing set up, there was a need to better control the organization of parts coming into the shipping area. This was a new task that IW was implemented to help achieve.
The first upstream area the supplier addressed was the assembly area that directly fed into the large area of stockpiled parts that shipping had to pick from.
The assembly area consisted of four individual assembly lines that gathered several components of the door panel to put them together into the final assembly pieces. Each line was scheduled by a person manually entering commands into a machine screen to change each part type. The quantity built for each part number was given by a separate department to Operations on a printed sheet of paper(s) each day. The amount of each part number produced by Operations was also manually recorded on a sheet of paper and in this manual system the quantities of each final assembly part number often did not match the quantities requested.
The Use of IntelliWORKS MES to Automate Inventory Counts and Part Changeovers
The manual nature of scheduling and controlling production left a lot of room for improvement in inventory recording and control, especially when it came to reducing waste (of space from overproduction and of time/money from underproduction). The decision was made to change the assembly area from a “batch build” strategy to a JIT build strategy to match the shipping requirement. To drive IntelliWORKS in the assembly area, different filtering and processing was applied to the same broadcast data already received for the shipping area.
IW was implemented at each station on each of the assembly lines to achieve the following:
- Broadcast Receiving – The assembly area was able to use the same broadcast received for shipping to synchronize the source of production orders with the actual customer demand.
- Broadcast Processing – Processing and filtering the raw broadcast data to get the correct internal part numbers needed for the supplier’s individual assembly lines to control production orders and error proofing at each area where IW is implemented.
- Automated Scheduling – IW is used to drive each assembly line with automated scheduling of individual parts in an organized list of internal part numbers to each individual assembly line.
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- This greatly increases the accuracy of inventory, since each line is now building exactly what the customer orders when they order it – as opposed to an estimate that is never exact and not adaptable.
- Automatic Part Change-Over – The connection to each assembly station allows live control and recording of machine settings used for error proofing and manufacturing parameters.
- No more changing parts manually at each machine – it is set and recorded every part cycle by IW.
- In most cases, this also allows for new part numbers to be entered into the system without requiring any PLC changes.
- Automatic Production Recording – IW provides accurate production counts of every part number produced and communicates live with the supplier’s inventory management system to automatically record production backflush functions.
With IntelliWORKS implemented to automate inventory control and manage all part change-overs, production inventory is recorded automatically! Inventory accuracy improved to a reliable level. IW provides the control of manufacturing needed to maintain the inventory accuracy long term and reduce waste. There was more to achieve, but the supplier immediately felt the benefits of tightened control over the shipping and assembly areas.
Interested in learning more about IntelliWorks? Check out our other recent blog articles, or connect with our team.
