MES upgrades capture kanban inventory levels, allowing electronic replenishment pulls.

The visual factory has come a long way since the concept was introduced, moving from production status viewable by walking the factory floor to a comprehensive collection of real-time data viewable from any interconnected computer. That evolution isn't seamless for many electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers, however. While newer equipment platforms are designed to integrate with manufacturing execution systems (MES) easily, legacy equipment platforms may require specialized programming or other workarounds to achieve desired interoperability. Equipment communication incompatibilities often lead to multiple shop floor control systems being utilized among work areas, which is inherently inefficient.

SigmaTron International's Chihuahua, Mexico, facility recently dealt with these issues when the facility began transitioning to the company's proprietary Tango MES. The company's corporate IT and operations teams have worked together to define enhanced shop floor capabilities in production and are upgrading system capabilities across facilities. The challenge for facilities implementing the latest enhancements is creating efficient equipment interfaces and integrating or replacing legacy processes.

A DoE reveals the packaging type matters less than the process used.

The need for electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection is drilled into production workers from day one in most electronics manufacturing facilities. Most facilities have multiple layers of protection including floor tiles or conductive coating, smocks, individual grounding devices, ESD mats on workstations, and ionizing blowers throughout the production process. There are also multiple layers of protection from conductive totes to metalized bags for product as it ships out. There is a tendency to believe more protection is always better. Given that the seven wastes include both defects and overprocessing, however, from a Lean manufacturing standpoint there is value in analyzing how much protection is required for shipped products. Considering whether multiple layers of protection create a false sense of security with operators involved in pack/unpack operations also has value.