Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1466505
44 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2022 carrier has been used? ere are cases, for example, where a reel of specialized chips was used once a week over a period of several months, each time using a very small number of pieces. Each time the material was set up, spoilage occurred, resulting in around 30% true spoilage rates. It is very challenging to find out that suddenly there are no remaining materials for the next few months of committed production, and nothing on order in the supply chain. • How "old" are the materials, bearing in mind the many transportations and changing environments that they have been put through as part of their unused collective whilst in their carrier? Moving between environments with different humidity and temperatures causes issues with many types of material. • Where are the carriers? Most oen, partly-used carriers of materials remain in manufacturing between work orders. ese are being managed, more oen than not, by a team people who are work- ing different shis, moving things around, and using materials for other work orders. It is extremely difficult to keep track of specific partly-used material carriers, especially with most ERP and MES solutions not keeping track of such materials to this degree of granularity. ese used to be minor, infrequent issues, mainly occurring in between very long pro- duction runs, and therefore deemed insignif- icant. Today, these issues occur frequently, even daily. e management of these issues impacts our decision-making process in terms of deciding what products can be made, and affects the quality with which those products are made. Work that has been absorbed in out- dated practices and procedures is human-aug- mented material management: those few peo- ple who could be relied on to find and make things happen. With the current levels of vola- on reels, in trays, bags, boxes, or other contain- ers. ese are used not only for discrete com- ponents, but also for materials measured using fractions of their initial content, such as vol- umes of liquids for dispensing, coating, clean- ing, and solder paste, as well as lengths of wires and cables. For mass production, carriers are very convenient for simple logistics, but as you look deeper at other production paradigms, these carriers introduce a very complex logis- tical challenge. Other than high-volume manufacturing, production oen does not consume the entire quantity of materials within each carrier, leav- ing partly-used carriers of remaining materials, and which require specialist management. is very simple fact greatly contributed to produc- tivity levels decreasing from 90% with high- volume production, to some extreme, high- mix cases of only 10%. Whatever benefits have come from mechanically automated produc- tion (the dream of the third industrial revolu- tion) have become the proverbial nightmare. As the market has slowly transitioned from high-volume to high-mix, manufacturing has become gradually accustomed to tweaking existing operations and practices. It creates continuous strain but never breaks. Today's sudden increased volatility in the market takes us beyond that point. As many manufacturers face mounting questions daily of what can or should be built, the least concern should be how—but that is not the case. Consider the increased overhead on what has become rou- tine decision-making in terms of material man- agement: • Which carriers of material are the most suitable carriers to use? • What quantity/length/volume of material is remaining, and will it satisfy the needs of the work order without lost time of additional replenishment? • How accurate is that assessment, bearing in mind the many opportunities for spoilage over the times that this material