In recent years, under the upsurge of Industry 4.0, Industrial Interconnection, Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, etc., many outstanding manufacturing companies around the world have carried out smart factory construction practices. Among them, the electronics industry has become the focus of intelligent manufacturing due to its wide and extensive industry layout. In the field of SMT in the electronics industry, intelligence can improve the huge space, and it has also become a practical gathering place for intelligent manufacturing.
At present, many smart SMT factory solution providers have emerged in the market, and they have expanded and explored in statistics such as data statistics and data display. These solutions are mainly based on kanban, statistics, and display. They do not have real intelligence.
So, what should a real smart SMT factory look like? Let’s first understand the basic modules and functions that an intelligent SMT factory should have.
The construction of smart factories in the electronics industry should be built and designed around “lean production”. Smart factories are just a concept, tools and assistants for “lean production” field managers. Its construction is inseparable from the basic factory management philosophy, and it is the direct implementation of TPM, the pursuit of the ultimate factory philosophy. The principles it should pursue: zero defects, zero waste, zero loss.
Therefore, the construction of a smart SMT factory is based on maximizing benefits and eliminating waste as its design goal and pursuit. Intelligent SMT factories should focus on the following modules: capacity & equipment, quality & yield, cost & efficiency.
When it comes to capacity, equipment maintenance modules are essential. It is necessary to realize the functions of data acquisition, automatic inspection, and automatic confirmation of important parameters of the equipment, and to achieve preliminary statistics and automatic confirmation of the equipment status.
On the one hand, this can reduce the workload for the daily inspection of the factory, and on the other hand, generate basic factory data. It is of great significance for personnel’s OEE data analysis, production improvement, and equipment abnormal warning. Using big data analysis algorithms or even machine learning algorithms to analyze the key parameters of the collected equipment can obtain the actual equipment life prediction. Know in advance and check regularly, so that temporary abnormal conditions can be effectively controlled or even eliminated. Realize the maximization of production capacity and equipment utilization.
Quality & Yield
Quality and yield are the basis of factory production, and they are also the most concerned objects of factory managers. In the intelligent SMT factory, there are many factors that affect the yield and quality, and several aspects must be focused on prevention and control.
The first is material confirmation and management. Due to its special nature, the materials in the SMT industry are mainly operated by personnel, and there may be situations in which materials are incorrectly placed due to mistakes in personnel operations. Therefore, letting the system improve personnel errors and management complexity is an indispensable functional module for the construction of intelligent SMT plants.
Secondly, the information tracking module is an important part of the source tracking of smart factories. It realizes real-time monitoring of parameters through the collection and statistics of product parameters and information, and can also provide backtracking for abnormal products in post-processing.
Finally, carry out productive analysis on the accumulated production data, such as the characteristics of the product (the SPC condition of the furnace temperature, the Cpk condition of the product), the throw rate of the product, and the printing quality, etc. to achieve targeted improvements, thereby improving the product Rate and quality.
Cost & efficiency
Cost and efficiency are fundamental to factory production and determine the competitiveness of the factory. In terms of cost, reducing waste and zero Loss is the ultimate cost reduction in the true sense. Similarly, increasing efficiency can reduce consumption and waste, so costs often go hand in hand with efficiency. In terms of cost and efficiency, we can improve from the reduction of personnel, automatic switching of production lines, automatic scheduling, enterprise links and production supervision.
In the production process of the SMT production line, feeding, printing, patching, baking, AOI inspection, etc. have basically realized fully automated production, and there is not much room for reducing manpower. In terms of material supply, it is the main field of cost and efficiency in terms of production line switching.
For example, we realize the self-enablement (intelligent) closed loop of equipment self-feedback, self-provisioning (decision making), and self-implementation (AGV handling) to achieve a production site with few or even no people, thereby improving efficiency and reducing costs.
Secondly, we use the system to interface the warehouse materials, personnel management modules, document modules, and basic data to achieve a full link to the enterprise system, to achieve paperless office and systematic office, and to achieve product and operation information in the enterprise. Full life cycle management.
Finally, the big data algorithm is used to implement intelligent scheduling, instead of the traditional manual scheduling method, and the real-time data of production is used to feedback the product status and timely warning of personnel to achieve the purpose of real-time discovery and rapid resolution.
The construction of an intelligent SMT plant focuses on process management, business logic, human behavior and efficiency. Focusing on the spirit of lean production: reducing waste, improving endlessly, continuously digging, deepening, and adopting more technologies and methods to optimize and innovate, new applications and ideas can emerge, bringing to the manufacturers in the SMT field To more meaningful values ​​and benefits.