Page 28 - Ei Christmas Magazine 2025

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Manufacturing Operations
Manufacturing Changes in 2025
As always there are many changes to the manufacturing landscape, which are
co-ordinated, managed and implemented by several teams that work very well
together to make the transitions as efficient as possible with minimum disruption
to the production output. Plant Facilities, Line Maintenance, Test Engineering,
Automation and NPI teams are all intrinsically involved to deliver against the
manufacturing plans.
The EiA600 Series Alarms are an older PIC based
device with no UART communication ability.
Consequently, we were unable to interrogate/write
to the device under test and validate its results in
our database. This was identified as a weakness in
our production control process.
The development of the new Verifier for these cells
allows us to read the results of the product testing
and align it with a dedicated serial number in the
database. The database is then interrogated at the
Pack station to ensure a pass result is available.
Five new Verifier stations were built, commissioned
and installed in the five EiA600 series before Q2
2025.
Ei3000 Series Verifier vision system upgrade
A recent mix up in covers for the Ei3000 series
cells highlighted a gap in our production control
processes. The inclusion of a vision system into the
existing verifiers will now identify if an incorrect
cover is used.
We continued our digital transformation journey by updating and completing a number of projects to enhance our digital landscape. This transformation enables us
to use the digital data to help improve our manufacturing and customer service processes.
The following additions were added to the Exchange Platform
(required to manage the AES keys for the Ei6500 Series):
Training environment.
French “warehouse” and SKU.
Polish warehouse and SKU.
The Pack App remains a critical “cog” in our manufacturing control process.
The changes this year included:
Addition of multiple SKUs.
Inclusion of the Production Schedule to help manage volume of SKUs
(reduce error in SKU selection).
Extra controls and logging e.g. reprints.
Code level Unit testing.
Additional Apps:
Development of a Spare Parts Management App which allowed various
teams to manage and control their own spare parts. The App is being use by
Auto Insertion, Test Maintenance, Line Maintenance and NPI.
Digitisation of Auto Insertions Technician’s Reports for an Android tablet
as shown below.
“Flexible” Cell to produce various products
The lower volume products can no longer be
facilitated in a dedicated production cell space.
Consequently, the cell layouts are designed with
flexibility in mind to afford “quick” changeover.
The cell includes changeover kits for the ICT
tester and dedicated Function and RF testers in
their bespoke chasses which can be wheeled in/out
and hooked up to the power/services. Cell #153 is
now designed to manufacture the Ei170/171RF, the
Ei1120/1125 OK/NOK and the future Ei450RL2.
Ei170/171RF Hard of Hearing Module
The new Ei170/171RF Hard of Hearing Module
was designed and released this year. The new
design incorporates a more efficient production and
test assembly process.
TEC (Ei1120/Ei1125)
The OK/NOK (Ei1120/1125) was finally released
by Engineering in Q4 2025. The associated
manufacturing cell can be quickly generated/
converted in Cell #153.
Transition to Ei600ST Series
The remaining two Ei650PIC cells were
converted to Ei650ST. All outstanding
Ei650PIC material was consumed by FW38.
Additional Capacity for EiA600 series
(OEM)
Cell #119 was converted from Ei600PIC to
the 5th EiA600 Series cell. This increased
manufacturing capacity to 30k units per
week to cater for the additional demands.
This cell development required some
adjustments to the existing cell layouts to
facilitate the installation.
The main cell relocations this year focused on
transferring the Ei6500 Cells from Bay 39 to Bay 42.
All twelve cells were relocated and validated before
production. In addition, 2 cells were redesigned for
the Ei6500-COMBO product which is expected to be
in production next March 2026.
Ongoing Improvements Cell Conversions
New Test Developments
Digitalisation
New Cell Builds
Cell Relocations
Some of the incremental changes to the productivity
included:
4% improvement to the Ei146e model.
10% improvement to the Ei606 (Ei650R) model.
10% improvement to the Ei170RF model.
18% improvement to the Ei1025 model.
Henry, Leo, Darren & Terence
- Joe & his Line Maintenance Team -
Shaun, Dan, Mike, Aaron, Cian, Kieran
Martin, Vlad, Mike & Conor
- Pat with his Test Maintenance Team -
Michal, Eoin, Matt, Cathal, Vincent, Nigel & John
- James with his Plant Facilities Team -
David, Joey, Brian, Saeed, Richie, Peter & Eoin
Additions to the Grafana platform include:
Extra check for SIM plan.
Worked with Test Engineering to digitise the wrist strap checker and deliver
respective reports.
Repeated Fail Alerts for Proactive Test Engineering Response.
Facilities Energy Monitoring data.
Visualisation of extra data, including panel and biscuit QR codes.