Envisioning long term benefits
29 May 2007
When Parker SSD Drives in Littlehampton, England, embarked on a £320K investment in their SMT process with Siemens Automation & Drives – EAS, the aim was to improve the reliability of aging machines and increase productivity. What they did not envisage was the benefits this project would have on their entire manufacturing process.
Part of the $170M SSD Drives Group, which is in turn owned by Parker Hannifin, the Littlehampton facility manufactures AC/DC Drives for the industrial markets, focusing on market sectors such as paper, metals, plastic and rubber converting, and food and beverage. Another sector is test rigs which involved them supplying the drive for the test rig that loads the gearbox on the Bugatti Veyron.
In autumn 2005 SSD’s management team took the decision to update the surface mount lines manufacturing power and control boards for their drives.
“We were operating three lines, but two were becoming unreliable and costly to maintain,” explains PCB Support Team Leader, Martyn Dellow. “We have a large product variation at PCB level and with multiple product changeovers and new product introductions, we weren’t interested in reducing fractions of a second from our process, for us flexibility and reliability were paramount.“
“It became clear that a number of issues were on the increase,” agrees Phil Read, Service Business Development Manager at Siemens A&D. “During a visit to the site in early 2005 we proposed our Consultancy Production Report Service. This resulted in a ‘warts and all’ review and became the catalyst for this project.”
“The consultancy report was an invaluable investment,” says Dellow. “I didn’t want to know what we were good at; I wanted to know what we were not good at. The report was incredibly honest and not simply based upon what investment Siemens could gain from it. In fact it went through our entire production process layer by layer and resulted in changes to the way we operated from the very next week, and continued to do so.”
Once it was evident how much SSD could improve, even without investing in
equipment, the decision to invest in their SMT process became much simpler. The report prompted a one day workshop at Parker SSD Drives to determine how they could best achieve their goals.
“Every option was investigated,” explains Read. “We put forward various solutions with varying price tags, from our latest technology SIPLACE X Series, to pre-owned equipment and the refurbishment of their existing machines. Given that one option was the reduction in the number of lines, we also wanted to prove that with our equipment less really could mean more.”
SSD looked at all the options, not only in terms of the cost implications but also the disruption to their production process and ultimately their customers. They considered training requirements if new or pre-owned equipment and software were introduced, and the requirement for an increased spares inventory. The need to keep costs to a minimum, to achieve the best return on their investment and to keep things simple in terms of the impact on their production process and their staff encouraged the refurbishment
This was to be the start of a major project which included reducing the SMT lines from three to two, the comprehensive refurbishment of the placement machines, the purchase of a pre-owned SIPLACE S20 machine and a Waffle Changer, together with a line support software upgrade.
The goal was to bring the lines back to total efficiency and increase productivity. One way in which SSD felt they could achieve this was to remove the burden of the oldest and most unreliable line. However, this raised a number of issues: First and most obvious, how do you increase production with two lines not three? The age and reliability of the placement equipment on the two remaining lines was another concern, as they had been worked hard placing literally millions of standard SMT components. A further issue was the flexibility of those same two lines; with different placement solutions products could not be swapped between them for line maintenance, for example.
“The most modern machines were the two SIPLACE S20s and an F4,” explains Siemens A&D Derek Cullen, Parker SSD Drives Account Manager. “To provide a common platform for product interchange it was decided to source a pre-owned SIPLACE S20, together with a Waffle Changer to make the two lines identical. Our Pre-owned machines are subject to a complete rebuild and to all intents and purposes become a new machine.”
The project planning stage was completed within one month, with the refurbishment work taking about the same time.
“A complete machine rebuild in Germany was also one option for the existing placement machines,” says Read. “As for refurbishment, yes we had undertaken machine upgrade work on site before; but we had never carried out anything on this scale.” However, the need to keep production at near full volume throughout the project led to the decision to carry out a comprehensive and phased refurbishment on site. “Naturally this was a daunting task for both companies,” adds Read. “It required precision planning and for about a month we were in contact on a daily basis”.
The major refurbishment began and each stage meant stripping the machine down to some extent and then re-building it within a set time period, so the pressure was on. If any stage was not completed Siemens would have been letting down another part of the SSD manufacturing process, outside of the SMT process itself and that was not an option. “It’s a credit to our engineering team that each machine was handed back on time throughout the whole process,” says Read.
“The implementation stage was extremely well managed by Siemens,” agrees Dellow. “The work was well planned and carried out at weekends when required. They were very accommodating to the point that to achieve some of the tighter timescales they brought in engineers from France and Italy. They would work outside of core hours, sometimes putting in twelve hour days which I found very applaudable.”
Siemens SIPLACE Pro line control software platform enables the conversion of basic CAD data into placement programs on SIPLACE machines, and offers around a 45% time saving in PCB placement program creation.
“The graphical interfaces are extremely user-friendly, what you see is exactly what you get making production scheduling significantly easier and faster,” says Dellow. The SIPLACE OIS - Operator Information System module allows real-time tracking of production performance data both at the machines and at SIPLACE Pro programming stations.
To speed product changeovers Siemens suggested adding SiCluster so that once a product is programmed it can be run on any line, no matter what the machine combination.
“Prior to SiCluster we would look at a new products requirement and try to figure out where it would best fit. SiCluster uses an optimiser which groups them into the smallest number of family set-ups, thereby reducing the total changeover time”, says Dellow.
Siemens carried out an upgrade of their entire communications system, including the latest specification upgrades to Windows XP. The project relating to SIPLACE Pro was started in mid June 2006 and was completed in September, running in parallel with the previous support software for a further month. The process was in planned phases to reduce any impact on production, see Table 1:
Table 1. Phased installation of SIPLACE Pro upgrade
1. Domain integration = Installation onto a customer supplied server and the set up of customers own PCs. (First installation of this type in UK/Ireland).
2. Staff training
3. Machines made ready as part of the parallel refurbishment process
4. SIPLACE Pro takes control of the lines in parallel with existing system
5. SIPLACE Pro takes total control.
“Operator level training on the two new lines was carried out by the Siemens engineer on the day shift and production support staff on the back shift, a very simple process at this level,” says Dellow. “Software training was conducted at Siemens Training Centre in Manchester and was a learning curve for us, off site training is one thing, but it’s when you are using it real time that the training really kicks in.
Siemens has provided us with a software platform which will take us well into the future, it has further capabilities which we can use if required later, including being able to install and access it on any PC in the factory. It can also be upgraded to offer advanced requirements”, sums up Dellow.
Throughout the refurbishment work and the software upgrade each mini project relied on the other, so a SIPLACE service engineer was assigned to manage each element, working closely with SSD support staff and holding telephone conferences throughout. Parker SSD Drives is now performing seven major ‘table change’ set-ups within a three day period; prior to this project they were performing in the region of ten per day, just one benefit from their investment.
“From the outset we knew exactly what our goals and objectives were and I am pleased to report we achieved them all,” says Dellow. “What we didn’t envisage, however, were the possibilities it would open up for us to streamline and improve all areas of our production process.” The follow-on benefits are summarised in Table 2.
Table 2: SSD discover unexpected benefits from investment in their SMT process.
Complete plant re-layout for improved efficiency in all areas
Introduction of new modules build line for the manual final assembly of drives
Introduction of highly efficient management tool for SMT lines for improved process scheduling
Off line table setup for reduced product changeover and NPI times
Productivity, quality & safety measurement now driven by the shop floor staff
Space for a ‘hot desk’ on the shop floor for our Production Team Leaders
Zoned operators for efficient manoeuvrability and support on the lines
Reduced manual handling at the end of the line to improve yield
Reduced spares inventory with a common machine platform
Reduced spend on Service callouts
Improved staff morale
“With a project of this size there are bound to be minor issues,” says Read. “However, through the efforts of the UK/Ireland SIPLACE Service Support Team these were overcome and the project was completed on schedule. This has been a model project and one which demonstrates what can be achieved when a supplier and customer work closely together. I would certainly advocate this route and if asked to carry out a similar project I would simply dust off the SSD project folder and follow the same principle.”
“I would happily endorse that,” concludes Dellow. “This has been a big investment in time up front, but with outstanding results. The process has also been about relationships; even before this project we have always been able to pick up the phone with a question on any aspect of our process. This type of support is never costed but is highly valued. Our twelve year relationship with Siemens is ongoing and we are now embarking on a further investment in ‘SIPLACE Set-up Center’, a software addition to eliminate the opportunity for incorrect reels to be loaded to the machine. Am I nervous about introducing another element to our production software? No, is the answer. I have seen first hand what a Parker SSD Drives and Siemens partnership can achieve.”
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