Leveraging the IT department to reduce operation-caused variation.

One continuing trend in electronics manufacturing services is the increasing role IT-related solutions have in supporting a Lean manufacturing-driven organizational culture. This is particularly true of proprietary solutions that automate processes in ways that minimize normally occurring variation or help eliminate non-value-added activity.

One example of this is SigmaTron International’s proprietary Manufacturing Execution System (MES) system known as Tango, whose Phase III system went live at the EMS company’s Elk Grove Village (IL) facility in June. The overarching goal of Tango is to centralize tools used throughout the company for production management, while adding enough flexibility via customization to address facility-specific or customer-specific situations.

System strategies and the visual factory can handle rapid changes in demand.

Supply-chain disruption and Lean philosophy rarely go hand-in-hand. In some cases, however, systems created to support Lean manufacturing or principles themselves help mitigate the chaos the pandemic has created in the global supply chain.

SigmaTron has operations in the US, Mexico, China and Vietnam. As a result, we had a bird’s-eye view of the initial impact on manufacturing operations in China and used that as a roadmap for preparing operations in other locations for disruption, along with best in-plant practices for disease mitigation. While the ways different jurisdictions reacted to Covid-19 varied, the issues were somewhat similar. This column looks at some lessons learned in that process from this contract manufacturer’s perspective.

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How Lean Six Sigma prepares workers for tomorrow’s workplace.

People outside of manufacturing often imagine that technology’s next step is to turn factories entirely over to robots. While factory automation is growing by leaps and bounds, the reality is most automation is paving the way for workers to be far more involved in critical decision-making on the factory floor. Just as Industry 4.0 is the driving force behind smarter machines that automatically analyze and adjust processes as they inspect product, Lean Six Sigma is paving the way for a smarter workforce, capable of analyzing production trends and optimizing processes.

The benefit of Lean manufacturing philosophy is a holistic focus on eliminating issues that create bottlenecks, defects and wasted effort. It aligns well with an Industry 4.0 vision, since greater levels of automation help drive reduced variation, and eliminate excess handling and errors related to manual processing. However, while a Lean vision helps drive efficiency and improve throughput, factories with a lot of product variation, as is found in contract manufacturing, do develop inefficiencies that need to be addressed. Six Sigma provides a powerful methodology and toolbox for addressing these inefficiencies. Implemented correctly, it creates problem-solving discipline that teaches production teams how to make good choices in the problems they choose to solve, thoroughly analyze root cause, test their preferred solution and make sure the improvement is sustainable over time.

Additive processes are an effective tool toward the single-iteration design goal.