Manufacturing Optimization
Unlocking Greater Productivity and New Efficiencies in
Today’s Rapid-Pace Automotive Plants
Workforce • Processes • Equipment • Safety
2 | Manufacturing Optimization
This paper addresses the everyday pressures and challenges facing
modern auto manufacturing plants, and outlines four key areas where
manufacturers can improve productivity and reduce downtime.
Introduction
Global auto sales are expected to exceed 85 million in 2014, according to IHS Automotive.
If so, this will be the fifth straight year of record sales – a clearer sign than ever that the
global recession is now behind the auto industry.
Helping bolster sales in the mature markets have been the
availability of more vehicle models and options than ever before.
Meanwhile, emerging markets are driving unprecedented growth
in the industry. According to the Credit Week report “The Global
Auto Industry Shifts Its Focus To Overseas and Emerging Markets,”
emerging markets accounted for just more than half of the global
light-vehicle sales in 2010, which was a first in the industry’s history.
The auto industry’s turnaround has improved the business of
auto manufacturers around the world. At the same time, this sales
boom is putting renewed pressure on auto manufacturing plants
to produce more vehicles in more variations, with downtime and
disruptions kept to an absolute minimum.Challenges In the high velocity world of auto manufacturing, seconds matter. Finding efficiencies that help you take even seconds off a manufacturing process can ultimately lead to an additional one or two more vehicles being produced each day. With high production quotas and critical profits attached to each vehicle, this seemingly small improvement in daily numbers can add up in the long run to
generate significant additional annual revenue.
But managers seeking to optimize their operations and equipment
are feeling the pressure, with more challenges than ever on the
plant floor. Production has been consolidated to the point where most auto plants now
produce several vehicle makes and models. In addition, vehicle refreshes are happening
much more frequently to meet continually changing customer demands.
This is all driving greater complexity into the plant and is requiring more frequent
changeovers. Production must be unyielding, and plant managers are tasked with getting
more out of their plants than ever before.
By focusing on four key areas for optimization on the plant floor, you can address these
challenges and drive continual improvements in productivity and uptime.
“Since [2010], emerging growth markets have extended their lead in the global sales race for light-vehicles (cars, SUVs, vans, and light trucks under six tons gross vehicle weight), with 52% of the worldwide market in 2011, 54% in 2012, and 55%
(estimated) in 2013. And we
expect this trend to continue,
given these markets’ economic
momentum and their sheer
numbers of potential buyers.”
Credit Week: The Global Auto Industry Shifts Its Focus To Overseas and Emerging Markets
Manufacturing Optimization | 3
1.  Workforce
Whether you’re launching a new plant or adding a new vehicle on an existing line,
don’t overlook worker preparedness. Auto makers too often focus on the mechanical,
electrical and control issues involved in a vehicle launch, which means that worker-induced
downtime issues are frequently left unchecked.
With this in mind, worker preparedness should be addressed well before your launch.
Ensure workers are empowered with all the knowledge sets they’ll need regarding the
machines, tools, procedures and processes that they’ll be using. For a new facility launch,
set baseline skills goals for workers. For a new vehicle launch on an existing line, conduct
an assessment to see where skills stand today and then implement a training program
that works toward your goal.
Your workforce also should be equipped with the latest technologies that can help
maximize their productivity. When downtime events occur, for example, plants notify
workers through some form of alarm system. In most cases, lights flash and bells ring.
Maintenance workers are sometimes paged, or screens may display messages.
But what’s the quality of the information that you’re relaying to workers? Do they
immediately know what they need to do? Or are they being left to figure it out on
their own?
Delivering detailed diagnostic information that is role- and location-based to the right
people can significantly help reduce your mean time to repair. Instead of taking the time
to drive to the machine, diagnose the problem and determine if the right spare parts are
in stock, all of this information can be immediately delivered to workers when an event
occurs so they can take faster corrective action.
Such information is becoming easier to communicate as display boards in the plant
become more advanced, with high-definition graphics and touch-screen capabilities.
The information can also be directly sent to workers’ tablets or smart phones using mobile
technology. An electrician, for example, may receive the following information in
a downtime event:
• The machine location
• The specific error(s)
• What tools/parts are needed
• Where those tools/parts are located
Ready to Launch
Rockwell Automation helped a major Chinese auto supplier launch its greenfield facility
with advanced new control architectures.
The goal was to ensure 100 percent of the plant’s maintenance workers and engineers
had a baseline competency in the new technology while 30 percent had mastery of the technology, prior to the facility’s prvoduction launch.
Using embedded instructors, a proprietary learning management system and training workstations, among other solutions, plant workers experienced an improvement in measurable skills three times greater than expected.
4 | Manufacturing Optimization
You should also have tools in place that allow you to manage for part and software
obsolescence. For instance, if a line goes down and you need a spare part, do you know
that the spare part in your crib is still the right one for the machine? Or if you plug in an I/O
module, do you know it will work because the software has been revised and is therefore
compatible with the system? Proactively managing for this upfront will help prevent it
韩国现代from becoming an issue during a downtime event.
On-site support services can help with start-ups, line commissioning, preventative
maintenance and more. In many cases, support technicians and service providers no
longer even need to be on-site 24/7. Just as an organization’s IT staff can monitor systems
across multiple sites from a central location, support service providers can remotely
monitor your plants’ systems and machines around the clock from an off-site location
safely and securely. Remote support personnel can:
• Notify you when parts or components are reaching the end of their life cycle to stay
ahead of downtime events
• Direct your local resources to an alarmed event
• Remotely connect to a machine to take corrective action themselves
2.  Processes
The very nature of modern auto manufacturing
is driving a tremendous amount of complexity
into your processes. It begins on the plant
floor, where a flexible, demand-driven
manufacturing model means your production
schedule varies not only day by day but minute
by minute. On the business side, you’re striving
to gather data from dozens – if not hundreds –
of systems, while also interpreting, sharing and
reporting it across multiple levels.
You have the daunting challenge of trying to
unify these disparate processes and data to
build a more cohesive and efficient operation.
On the plant floor, one solution is to
incorporate model predictive control (MPC)
technology. This technology can compare current and predicted operational data against
desired results to provide new control targets, which helps reduce process variability and
inefficiencies while also improving consistency and part quality.
A paint shop serves as a good example. Some plants keep paint shops continuously
running – even between shifts and over the weekend – to ensure the ovens are always
the right temperature. MPC technology can link your paint schedule to your machines’
operations, giving you greater energy savings. The technology can also control the paint
process to ensure a consistently high-quality finish on your vehicles.
Similarly, workers can spend inordinate amounts of time gathering, assessing and
presenting data from their business systems. There are also problems of inconsistent data
between teams and an over reliance on a manual handling of the data, which can lead to
human errors, such as the wrong parts being ordered.
Automating these systems as part of a manufacturing intelligence strategy can help you
automate reporting and provide you with production data, KPIs and other critical analytics
in easy-to-understand dashboards.
Manufacturing Optimization | 5
This data can also be shared through a scalable and flexible manufacturing execution system (MES), so you can integrate your plant-floor production systems with your enterprise resource planning system to optimize manufacturing across multiple facilities. Achieving a truly connected enterprise that can get data securely to and from machines and people – at every level, in any location and in the right context – is vital. This greater enterprise-wide visibility can deliver information-based decision making to help :• Manage the scheduling and workload balance on flexible
manufacturing lines
• More quickly respond to supplier disruptions or changes in
customer demands
• Seamlessly incorporate changes in your manufacturing
operations based on quality feedback
3.  Equipment
Equipment is one of your largest capital investments and opportunities for continuous improvements throughout the manufacturing operations lifecycle. During the design phase, consider how your equipment will support flexible manufacturing. And when in  full production, identify opportunities for improvements.
There are several low risk improvements you can make over the lifecycle of your equipment to be more efficient and help speed overall operations. Equipment
improvements can be as simple as component migration to take advantage of features and functions at the right level of the architecture to deliver better performance. You can also apply a systematic, sta
ged migration approach, allowing you to upgrade equipment over time thereby reducing your upfront investment and ultimately achieving a better ROI.It is also important that you are proactive in managing product obsolescence that could result in downtime and lost productivity. This includes pinpointing any obsolescence risks and planning ahead to ensure you have access to parts, particularly for those that may be hard to find.
Embedded diagnostics can help reduce unexpected machine downtime and lower your mean time to repair. Today’s machines often provide little detail as to what’s wrong or what specifically needs to be repaired. Advanced diagnostics technology is changing that, so workers can diagnose problems more quickly and know exactly what to repair. Ideally, this technology is used for predictive diagnostics to help identify a potential problem before it becomes a downtime event. This would allow maintenance personnel to rectify issues during planned maintenance downtime.
Increased machine data and advance diagnostics empowers your personnel with greater visibility into plant-floor equipment, helping to ensure they have accurate and timely data on current machine performance. This allows them to make more informed decisions on asset utilization and can help identify production barriers to improve OEE.A scalable and flexible manufacturing
execution system (MES) that
integrates plant-floor production
and ERP systems, allows you to
share production data to optimize
manufacturing processes across
multiple plants.