Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/647109
74 SMT Magazine • March 2016 idle half of the time because the material hasn't gotten there, because they didn't plan the work orders correctly, the next shift never came in, a lot of different reasons. When we have very accurate data coming from this stuff that al- lows us to plan much better it's a big gain. So we can plan and group better, especially in high mix, high variance. It's no longer about the vol- ume manufacturing and optimizing the specific program on a specific machine, it's much more about how well you plan and group so you don't have to do setups all the time and you can run for a full shift. The other thing concerns materials. This al- lows us to much better manage the materials. We can do just-in-time replenishment, which means the machine has a low-level warning. Only then would we issue the material request and that's when we prep the material. So you don't have all this material lying around the factory. You're much leaner. You're much less cost on your stock and also much less material being lost, stolen, rejected, etc. Traditionally, we had operators who kept materials 48 hours in advance. That means for 48 hours they have all of the material lying around the fac - tory. It could have been material they might not produce at the end because of issues about the machines, lines down, maybe orders can- celled. We can really do that in maybe three, four hours before manufacturing, in real-time. That saves a lot of money. Matties: Does the type of employee change now because you don't have somebody with as much process knowledge anymore? Manor: I don't think so. I think maybe with all of these decision supporting tools they might need less operators. Matties: But it seems to me that the skillset shifts to more of data analysis than process. Manor: You have to be IT savvy and you have to know how to use these tools. It's not a lot about know-how in the brain, some of the know-how is moving from individuals to the machines. But somebody has to make a de- cision in real-time. Do we have an issue be- cause the processes are wrong? Or do we have an issue because the design of the product is flawed? Matties: A lot more analytical thinking goes on based on the data that's being produced. MEntor graPhICS' orEn Manor IntErvIEw