8CIOReview | | SEPTEMBER - 2023IN MY OPINIONThe visual inspection of fully assembled components is gaining increasing relevance in contemporary industry. This fact has long been recognized in mass production or safety-oriented industries such as aerospace manufacturing. Monitoring production processes has been a common practice even before the emergence of the term "Industry 4.0." However, applying these methods to custom-made products, often produced in small quantities, would make the associated costs non-competitive.Undesirable deviations in product quality can quickly become public knowledge and subject to sanctions in today's era of social media. In addition to potential warranty claims, which can reduce profit margins, there are other factors to consider. The reputation of a high-quality product or brand can be quickly damaged. From a process perspective, we need to consider the risks that should be avoided through careful process design. In recent years, the effort to minimize risks has increased significantly. In the past, in custom manufacturing, it was sufficient for experienced employees to assemble the product based on their expertise, with a quality expert inspecting the finished product for quality at the end of the process. Nowadays, process steps need to be verified and checked during their execution since it's no longer possible to verify the correct process parameters at the end. For example, lubricated bearing points with limited access at the end of the process cannot be directly inspected. If an employee does not execute this step correctly, it affects the quality of the finished product. The question is how significant this error ultimately is for the product. If this error is not discovered throughout the product's entire lifecycle, it may have no impact on the product's operation, or it may lead to premature product failure. However, from a manufacturing cost perspective, the situation is different. A small error in a low-cost process step can result in significant follow-up costs, including negative publicity on social media.To meet these increased requirements outside the established mass production industries such as the automotive industry, we rely on the possibilities offered by digitization. In our analysis, Industry 4.0 should not be just a buzzword or an inflated and costly process. Instead, we have thoroughly examined how we can effectively utilize digitalization methods to establish a new quality standard in the process without increasing the effort in the manufacturing process.The foundation for achieving this lies in a modular consideration of the process step. When examining an assembly process from a modular perspective, there are usually a limited number of different process steps that are executed with various parameters. An excellent example of this is tightening screws with different torque values. In process analysis, these are referred to as process parameters. Besides torque, there are other parameters involved in screw tightening. However, I don't just want to focus on the technical aspect but also on the definition of the process itself. If we consider the proven traditional approach in terms of Industry 3.0, in this case, the process would typically be defined by a work preparation specialist. This usually only occurs for particularly critical steps and not in the overall context. The effort and, in particular, the required expertise would exceed the time frame available in day-to-day operations. In reality, we rely on the knowledge of the employees. Regardless of the fact that we can no longer find enough skilled workers with extensive experience today, the question arises whether a skilled worker can even assess the risk associated with this process step. In our view, this is not the case, especially because it requires not only expertise but also comprehensive knowledge of custom product variations and increased requirements from standards.Therefore, we first isolate each individual step and examine the various parameters and variations present in the execution of that step. We employ a process FMEA and involve many knowledge carriers within the company to design a decision tree DIGITIZATION AND MODULAR PROCESS DESIGN: ENHANCING QUALITY AND EFFECTIVENESS IN CUSTOM MANUFACTURINGBy Johannes Moritzhuber, Head of Process and Production Development, Doppelmayr SeilbahnenJohannes Moritzhuber
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