IEN: What are the major concerns facing providers of assembly technology and related products and services in the next few years? How can they be addressed?
Gottsleben: Mass customization, combined with the trend toward smaller lot sizes and shortening product life cycles, affects manual assembly in much the same way automation is affected. Individual workstations, cells or entire lines need to be able to be set up or changed rapidly as the product mix or assembly process changes. Attention to this concern is actually greater in these challenging times than when companies were running at capacity and profits were flowing. Minimizing inventory on the line, yet making sure the line does not shut down due to shortages, is also a concern that relies on effective workplace organization to support supply chain strategies.
Arlink provides technical furniture solutions to manufacturing enterprises. Our customers rely on us to help them design and implement cost, space efficient, and flexible production lines and assembly cells, which may also involve integration of specialty equipment such as conveyors, FlowRacks, or other materials presentation or transport systems. Many of the products and techniques we utilize to enhance productivity at the workstation result in footprint reduction on the factory floor. Real estate costs money, and increasing profitability per square foot seems to be an increasing concern as factories are closed and operations from multiple facilities consolidated. Maximizing use of vertical space above and below the assembly workstation can reduce floor space requirements by as much as 30%. (Photo: Assembly personnel working on an integrated conveyor/workstation line; the fundamental design of the workstation is important in order to efficiently change setups for new models or reconfigure for changing tasks.)
The ability to easily transport production lines to other departments, or even to other factory locations, is of increasing concern, as changes in corporate manufacturing strategies can quickly shift production from one facility to another. Workstation systems should be easy to roll between departments, or be knocked down, palletized, and re-erected at a new location quickly and easily. We include ease of transportability in our fundamental design principles.
Viewing technical furniture as an important element within a lean manufacturing enterprise is a concept gaining momentum. Assembly workstations are a form of production tool, and should be designed with the principles of lean manufacturing in mind. Key lean manufacturing principles such as setup time reduction, flexibility, error proofing, elimination of waste, and workplace organization must be addressed by workstation manufacturers, but frequently are not. As industrial and manufacturing engineers seek to squeeze the last ounce of productivity from production lines and thinning staffing levels, manual and semi-automated processes carried out by workers at assembly stations come under increasing scrutiny. General workstation layout and individual workstation configuration can help eliminate bottlenecks and provide for flexible, dynamic routing of production to help balance lines.
IEN: What innovations are in store in assembly related systems, equipment and components, materials, and software?
Gottsleben: We are seeing a significant increase in requests for mobility and transportability. Arlink has recently introduced a modular, expandable, mobile production line system that enables customers to create single- or double-sided mobile production lines of unlimited length utilizing a unique mobile starter/adder concept. Users can easily relocate entire production lines to vary spacing between them, "park" a line temporarily when not in use, move lines out of the way to allow for cleaning of floors, or vary the length of lines by coupling or uncoupling lines from one another as product mix, volume, or processes demand.
The desire to amortize capital dollars over the broadest application base also affects technical furniture products investments. Customers want to know that the furnishings they purchase can easily be adapted to a wide variety of tasks in the event that the original application they were purchased for changes. Arlink addresses this concern by employing a "platform" concept, which allows customers to widely vary how the product is used while maximizing use of key components in all applications and minimizing the cost of conversion. For example, converting from a single-sided to a double-sided application requires the addition of only two low cost items and only minutes to convert the basic structure, and then the customer chooses the accessories appropriate to the new task.
Integration of IT technology into the individual workstation is accelerating. With the advent of relatively low cost and space efficient flat panel monitors, customers are increasing their push toward paperless work instructions. Low cost wireless networking is also contributing as the task of "wiring" a production line to the network becomes simpler and the reduction in "hard" wiring makes it more practical to change the entire layout of a production facility without having to deal with complex rewiring issues. This seems to be particularly true in the electronics assembly industry where the importance of collaborative manufacturing is growing rapidly. Electronics manufacturing is characterized by a large number of third party suppliers contributing to the manufacture of a single product, and technology product lifecycles can be as short as weeks. Quickly assimilating information from worldwide design or production facilities to implement engineering changes is essential to minimize product obsolescence, scrap, and rework, and these costs can expand exponentially as a function of delays in delivering up-to-date information to production lines.