Page 27 - Ei Electronics Christmas Magazine 2024

27
Manufacturing Operations
cont.
B-Logistik, in order to collect the serial numbers of the Alarms on a pallet, had to
break the pallet down and perform individual scans of each master carton. Using our
new pallet label and a custom application, we reduced this to a single scan per pallet!
This meant saving pallet unwrapping, labour costs, time and waste.
As well as being involved in, and help co-ordinate all manufacturing changes
including cell builds, cell conversions, equipment validation, etc, Yvonne and
her team have addressed a significant number of pilots, component changes,
process improvements and non-standard product builds.
• Component approvals
- 120 x second source component pilot projects and managing over
260,000 parts/devices through the production lines.
•
Test House Submissions for all the approved bodies - BSi, CNPP,
Kriwan, ITL, UL, and Kriwan.
- 20 projects (including RESET, EIA600 series, EI3000 series, etc)
totalling almost 500 controlled non-standard production-built Alarms.
• Non-Standard build (Customers)
- JCI – almost 1000 Alarms were built for customer evaluation & use.
• Process improvements included
- Fixtures improvements and optimisation for process assemblies.
- Development of a tool to help Production with the variability of the
OEM products.
• New Product Development projects (including RESET, Deaf Alarm, OK
NOK, Ei6500 Combo, etc)
-
Control and management of all new components (dedicated NPI
quarantine area).
- Real time tracking to ensure adequate supply for prototype builds.
- Supply of completed product to Engineering for analysis and
validation, includes assembly, testing and modifications where
required.
- Feedback on assembly issues.
Improvements and upkeep to Grafana, including the technical dashboards for
Quality, Test and Automation. The “MASS TV” boards for Production are displaying
the Pass, Fail and Validation counts, per new machine, objectively highlighting the
issues. The real time data helps direct the support teams to a faster solution.
The Automation dashboard is displaying the solder data collected by the Vision
Systems introduced for Solder Joint Inspection on new Gen III Solder Robots.
The biggest project this year is the management of the transition of the Ei600 Series
to ST with 43 models fully transitioned to date. This is a complex project involving
component planning, changes to manufacturing cells, manufacturing process and all
product documentation in 6 languages. 90% of this project is now complete. The only
models left are Busch Jaeger models (as still in approval process) and 2 French models
(these are being used to consume PIC components). From a documentation point, the
configurability of the product added complications to the manuals not only because of
local standards and regulations but also by the features (configurations) applied to the
product depending on market preferences.
This project has also allowed us to optimize our packing method with each master carton
label being printed automatically after a defined number of scans of the Serial label,
reducing errors and adding transparency and traceability. The master carton labels are
standardized. This is also true at pallet level where the pack app controls the maximum
number of units that can be put on a pallet.
Other projects included
• The management of the VDS certification and resulting marking changes.
•
The addition of a barcode on all Master Cartons for all French products as a
requirement from the new French DHL warehouse.
• The addition of EAN barcodes on Aico accessories for their warehouse.
• Warranty statement updated at Aico’s request.
Operations
• 28 new products (SKUs) generated.
• 272 documents created / updated.
• 193 ECNs processed.
• 9 new packing instructions completed.
Sustainability
• Reduce packaging weight of Ei450 by 30%.
• Reduction in printed manuals size.
• Use of preprinted lithium battery icons on
Master Cartons (reduced need for label).
• Online manual created for the Ei3030.
We altered and upgraded our manufacturing processes and Pack App to include
JCI’s modules, allowing us greater flexible to handle new OEM products.
Automated Pallet Scanning
Acquisition of AES Key Portal
NPI Manufacturing
SQL Server Management
NPI Packaging
Pack App updates
Paul with his Digitalisation Team - Terence, Leo & Darren
The NPI Packaging Team - Paul with Darren & Maria
Yvonne with her team David & Wojciech
Sontex developed the AES key portal, and we have to date used this portal for
the storage and allocation of our AES keys (for Ei6500 products). However,
Sontex have continued to develop additional functionality in the Portal to suit
their own needs and consequently diverge somewhat from ours. We agreed with
Sontex to split out the parts of the portal that we needed and install it on our own
AWS servers. The project spanned almost a year incorporating bespoke Portal
development, code adaption and delivery, data migration and final release. Our
own Exchange Platform Portal went live this month which gives us exclusive
access to our product data and enables us to provide more responsive and timely
support to our German customers.
Digitalisation, and the ability to work with data is a key requirement for our business growth. This year we continued our digital transformation
journey by 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.
Digitalisation