Stepping into the E-manufacturing Era Using LabVIEW

Author(s):
Camelia Sandu - Mitec Telecom Inc.

Industry:
Telecommunications

Products:
LabVIEW

The Challenge:
Building and implementing e-manufacturing in companies with low to medium levels of automation.

The Solution:
Developing a National Instruments LabVIEW application using real-time data acquisition for all components of the production system while respecting traceability requirements for modern manufacturing environments.

Frictionless Information Exchange
In the context of technology and the economy, frictionless information exchange is the main catalyst of any business. Increasing demand for information adds to demands for speed and accuracy. Market pressures force companies to implement e-manufacturing or integrated information systems. E-manufacturing includes customer-driven design and delivery, a flat corporate structure, virtual networks partnership, speed and agility, and a global orientation. The new manufacturing company is a network that shares information among departments including R&D, production, quality control, logistics, marketing, and distribution.

The actual software market offers many applications to integrate office automation, accounts, and business applications, but it does not cover all the requested areas of information.

Product Traceability
In addition, increased emphasis on quality assurance, product liability, legislation, and the establishment of national and international manufacturing standards create a need for product traceability. Traceability identifies the history of any product along the technological flow by calculating efficiency at line, cell, or operator level. All reports generated by real-time data collection help to locate the critical points in the technological flow, offering essential information for re-engineering the product.

We also use traceability to detect problems in the delivery chain, and to fulfill our archiving and retrieval obligations quickly with minimal effort. Traceability offers many advantages, including:

• Simple creation of traceability database
• Rapid resolution of "Where did they come from?" querie
• Accurate solutions to solve revision control problems
• Quick determination of:
  – Products in progress and in history
  – Quantity, type, and revision of components/parts required for a new purchase order received from clients
  – Cycle time
  – Yield reports per station
  – Efficiency reports per line/operator
  
  

Ease in Application Building
Many modular applications can run corporate information systems. However, changing the actual management software implies many costs - starting with the software itself and ending with personnel training.
The first step in building the application is to clearly define the target and choose the software environment. The goal is to gain real-time data acquisition from all production lines, offering detailed information about any product cell operator implied in the production flow. We proposed a model based on a flat control hierarchy. We maintained the two parallel data flows present in any company, because information systems must ensure communication among them.

LabVIEW offered the perfect link between the two main information structures: management level, based on a SQL (ODBC), the database used from the LabVIEW application through database connectivity module, and production level, with all test applications built in LabVIEW. The operator interface facilities and high-speed data entry also provided key advantages. We scan required information or choose from predefined lists extracted from a database.

Multi-User Setup
From the hardware perspective, the system supports a multi-user setup. Therefore, we must consider the number and the level of flexibility of the manufacturing cells, which results from the dynamics of the production lines.

In regard to software, we first decomposed production flow in the main components. The traceability program contains a module for each of these components. In fact, all modules function as operator interfaces designed to connect human factors, technological processes, and databases. In modern manufacturing companies, operator interfaces play an important role, resembling multimedia applications. They must be user friendly, contain all required information, respect the data structure already in existence, and offer online help depending on process state.

The operator interface guides the operator by following technological and traceability operations. The active window contains all the required information to accomplish a specific step at any moment. To proceed to the next operation window, we must enter all required data related to the current step accurately and completely. To reduce or maintain the production cycle as much as possible, we use a scanner for data entry and predefined information, like command codes.

Specific Operator Interface
As we decomposed the functional structure, we defined a specific operator interface for each functional unit of the technological flow including assembly, test, quality control, and shipping - following its particularities and duties of the operator. The table presents a possible structure of the application, indicating tasks to be executed by the operator and by the LabVIEW application. This scheduler must contain a complete image of the manufacturing and database structure.

We developed the program using LabVIEW with the Enterprise Connectivity Toolset. Each of the functional units in the manufacturing structure represents a sequence structure of the program. A page in the operator interface represents each sequence. We identify any data recorded in database by value, time, date, operator, cell, and line respectively.

The test center image presents an instance of the operator interface at the test center. We identify the product by type and serial number. Data extracted from database works on a type and revision query. We can also obtain information from a product serial number. We store the current test session in a temporary location until we decide not to perform another test. It is then transferred to the database.

Simplified Software Maintenance
The future vision of manufacturing evolution reveals the importance of implementing integrated information systems and one of their main components, product traceability. LabVIEW offers the advantages of a flexible, open architecture, and a user-friendly interface. It also dramatically simplifies software maintenance and further development.

We built the traceability system to provide a measure of all production flow components in terms of efficiency, time, and productivity. It works on real-time data acquisition concepts and records all events and data that occur during a manufacturing cycle in the database. The reports created in the database offer a complete image of the production cycle. We can use this to identify critical points successfully engineer new products and re-engineer existing ones. Sharing a unique database for all company applications is an important milestone towards implementing e-manufacturing.

For more information, contact:

Camelia Sandu

Mitec Telecom Inc.

9000 Trans-Canada Highway Pointe Claire, QC H9R 5Z8, Canada

Tel: (514) 694-9000

Fax: (514) 694-3933

E-mail: cburiec@mitectelecom.com

 

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