Real products for the virtual generation
13 November 2009
The term ‘internet speed’ is used to describe how services are created and delivered rapidly in the virtual world. But consumers are coming to expect real, high-tech products to arrive equally quickly. Rex Waygood, Technical Manager of Hansatech EMS explains.
Hansatech has now changed the way it does New Product Introduction (NPI), enabling new designs to be taken from a circuit diagram to full production in as little as two weeks.
Western European EMS companies value NPI contracts. This is valuable business that makes use of their engineering competencies and typically high-mix, low / medium-volume manufacturing facilities. NPI in Europe is usually a precursor to high-volume manufacturing carried out offshore, in a territory that has a lower cost base. To fulfil this model, the brand owner commissioning the NPI work expects the European EMS partner to understand the product quickly, identify and solve any barriers to manufacturability, and produce a detailed report that will help streamline transfer to the volume-manufacturing place.
This approach is effective for high-volume consumer goods, where brand owners tend to be extremely price sensitive and operate under increasing pressure to hit very short market windows. Product lifecycles can be months, or even weeks, and the next-generation product must be ready almost immediately.
This hardening commercial situation requires EMS companies to deliver to more and more aggressive schedules while at the same time controlling costs and maintaining quality. Today, manufacturers are delivering to time and cost targets that would have been considered impossible just a few years ago, and the demands continue to tighten.
Hansatech is fortunate to partner with a well-known consumer electronics brand, which involves NPI work to help prepare for volume production of products such as cable and satellite set-top boxes. There are multiple product lines, and each is following an aggressive roadmap in terms of features, launch dates and selling price. For a while, the delivery schedule for NPI projects has been so aggressive that normal quoting procedures are simply too slow to meet the delivery deadline.
Instead of assessing each new design individually to calculate a price for first-article build, as is normal practice, Hansatech has agreed a pricing menu according to complexity. The menu has been refined over time to become progressively more accurate, and allows product builds to begin quickly at a price acceptable to both companies.
However, product lifecycles continue to shorten, and so too must the time to complete an NPI project. Although demands are increasing, there is no accompanying allowance for failure to meet them. The challenge is to deliver even more quickly, while maintaining strict control over costs and quality.
Throwing ‘whatever it takes’ in terms of extra hours, staff or capital equipment is not a realistic solution. The need to maintain quality matching up to ISO9000 accreditation, on the other hand, prohibits the task force approach where a team has permission to break any rules necessary to meet the customer’s deadline. A solution has been found by establishing new procedures and tools meeting the requirements of quality accreditations. In addition, some staff have been re-trained, responsibilities re-defined, and even some single-customer dedicated departments have been set up. Clearly good communications throughout the business have been necessary to ensure that all employees feel secure and confident in their roles – whether these have changed or not.
The key to delivering the turnaround necessary to meet consumer-market pressures has been to automate procedures that consume large amounts of time in the conventional NPI flow. The quoting procedure has already been described; with this in place, the customer posts new contracts directly to an FTP site. Hansatech software monitors the site automatically and captures the information into our own system.
Driven by the captured information, computerisation helps to co-ordinate the project which is maintained by our key account manager dedicated to this one customer. This acts as the central source of all information necessary to complete the build, including generating the project drawings, designing essentials such as the solder-paste stencil, and programming the placement machines and the test equipment specified by the customer. In addition, activities such as raising the order for the stencil are completed electronically, working from the calculated design data, and emailed to purchasing. This saves around 10 minutes of an engineer’s time to enter the order manually and removes the possibility of human error.
The project tracker co-ordinates the creation of necessary drawings and parts lists, which can then be used to drive purchasing. This way, orders for components and essentials such as the stencil can be placed within minutes of the initial project data being posted on the FTP site; a large percentage of each process is completed electronically.
In fact, changes to procurement have been fundamental to achieving faster NPI; even the most efficient, automated project cannot run if the required components are not available. Customising the company’s Epicor ERP software has enabled a one-page view presenting live updates on procurement activity for each project. This helps to ensure all reports present accurate data, which is essential for kits to arrive at the point of use without delay. However accuracy, ultimately, requires individual stores personnel to report the true inventory position as close as possible to real time. Relationships with the supply chain are also quite unique. Highly developed purchasing skills with support from the customer ensure availability of materials and secure components still in development. This delivers the latest technologies within consumer time-to-market expectations here in the UK.
Orders are typically placed for next-day delivery, and production of the first prototypes can begin within days. It is important to remember, at this point, that the fully-built prototypes are not the customer’s primary concern. The NPI project is intended to collect data and refine the build process to enable a smooth transition into very high-volume manufacturing. A problem that has a relatively minor effect in low volume assembly can cause serious disruption when production is ramped up offshore. Hence the NPI contract sets out to identify such problems, solve these where possible, and return a build report to the customer as well as the required number of first-production units.
The build report is required on the day following completion of the first-article build. To achieve this, the required information is collected and stored during the build process, rather than being assembled through a series of group discussions once the build is completed. Compiling the report can then be carried by one person, the chief production engineer, more quickly and efficiently than can be achieved by taking a conventional approach. The key account manager responsible for the project, in the eyes of the customer then reviews the report and arranges for its delivery.
If a given contracts calls for box-building of prototypes, this process has also been streamlined through extra training for assemblers to adjust equipment such as torque drivers. Conventionally, equipment such as this is setup to individual requirements, on request, within a specialist calibration department. By also installing the equipment to set up these instruments in the assembly area, a valuable time saving and boost to efficiency has been achieved.
In addition, a customer-dedicated group has been assigned to generate test programs on an ultra-fast-turnaround basis. This group operates alongside our existing test department. Although no customer-specific resources have been setup for end-of-line inspection, staff in this area are briefed to treat units received with appropriate priority.
By increasing automation, increasing capacity and staff skillsets where necessary, and streamlining procedures, a faster and more efficient NPI service has evolved meeting the extremely high targets set by a demanding consumer-products brand. Importantly, the process is fully documented, and maintains compliance with the company’s ISO quality accreditations.
Rather than throwing out the rulebook, Hansatech has rewritten the rulebook. This has become the foundation of what is now known within the company as Extreme NPI. This approach allows response to customer requirements significantly faster than is feasible using a conventional NPI flow.
The new approaches, and the tools developed, have driven changes in the way Hansatech interacts with all its customers. Using these techniques, the company recently developed a USB-based design from the customer’s initial circuit diagram through first-article build to full production readiness in only two weeks, proving that manufacturing can deliver real products within increasingly unreal schedules.
Contact Details and Archive...
Related Articles...
Most Viewed Articles...