01-how flexible is your factory

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I

f you practice yoga, flexibility is

extremely important. Bending and

stretching helps people accomplish

difficult poses such as downward-

facing dog or the standing half-

moon.

Flexible thinking is equally important

in todays complex business world. In

fact, Roland Berger Strategy Consultants

GmbH (Munich,

Germany) recently

c o n d u c t e d a

study in which it

discovered that the

key to success in

a slow economy is

flexibility.

C o m p a n i e sthat react quicker

to changes in the

market are able to

stay solidly in the

black, says Thom-

as Ring, a partner

in Roland Bergers

operations strat-

egy competence

center. The best companies actually

act against the cycle, using their com-

petitors weaknesses to strengthen their

own position.In a rapidly changing environment,

the ability to shift from growth plan

to capacity cutting and back when

the market recovers is becoming a

competitive success factor, adds Ring.

Global competition drives the speed

of changed market requirements. The

ability to quickly adjust is critical to

leverage market cycles and sustain

earnings, even during downturns.

As markets increasingly become

less predictable, Ring says flexibility

will become even more critical to

manufacturers. Flexible assembly lines

allow companies to react quickly to

shifting customer demands and short

product life cycles. A flexible machine

can be easily changed to adapt to

new production processes or product

designs.

Typically, a flexible assembly

system consists of a standard platform

and a series of interchangeable process

and test modules that can be removed,

modified and replaced quickly and

easily. It allows for the future assembly

of similar, possibly unrelated or

currently undefined products.Unfortunately, machine builders,

systems integrators and their customers

often have different definitions and ideas

about flexibility. It means different

things to different customers in different

industries, says Jim Diederich, vice

president of marketing at Assembly and

Test Worldwide (Dayton, OH). There

are multiple definitions of the word,

even within the same companies.

Weve seen opinions about

flexibility differ from the people

writing up initial specs to the peoplesigning off on finished equipment,

Diederich points out. To avoid problems

and confusion, he urges manufacturing

engineers to ensure that everyone in

their plant shares the same goals and

objectives with flexible assembly lines.

Flexibility implies more than just

product, process, lot-size and routing

flexibilities, claims Frank Chen, Ph.D.,

director of the Center for Advanced

HowFlexible

IsYour Factory?Flexibility is more

important than ever.

ByAustin Weber

Senior Editor

30 ASSEMBLY/ March 2009 www.assemblymag.com

Flexible assembly lines allow companies to

react quickly to constantly shifting customer

demands and short product life cycles.

Photo courtesy Honda Motor Co.

ASSEMBLY Planbook

30_asb0309flex.indd 3030_asb0309flex.indd 30 2/17/09 10:01:09 AM2/17/09 10:01:09 AM


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www.assemblymag.com March 2009 / ASSEMBLY 31

Manufacturing and Lean Systems at

the University of Texas at San Antonio.

It is how a manufacturing system can

cope with rapid changes of customer

demands in both product styling and

quantities, and how easily the systemcan be reconfigured to have higher

automation or higher labor content.

Productivity cannot be gained via

implementing flexible manufacturing,

notes Chen, who has been studying

flexible manufacturing systems since

the 1980s. Rapid customer response

and shorter time to market are the real

incentives for implementing flexible

[assembly lines].

Mark Dinges, product marketing

manager for linear motion and assembly

technologies at Bosch Rexroth Corp.

(Buchanan, MI), agrees with Chen.

Manufacturers are constantly pressed

with supplying smaller and more

complex products, he points out.

However, the greatest pressure actually

comes from reducing time to market. As

product life cycles continue to shrink,

successful manufacturers must utilize a

flexible production system to get their

products to market faster and to stay

competitive.

The ultimate goal of flexible

manufacturing is to provide the right

product to the right customer at the righttime, adds Dinges. Lean thinking is

involved here, because supplying the

right product at the right time includes

the concept of manufacturing to

customer takt time, and the ability to

ramp up or scale back production to

meet the level of customer demand.

Flexible Champions

When it comes to building complex

products and meeting customer needs,

its impossible to overlook the auto

industry, which has been implementingvarious forms of flexible assembly lines

for the past decade. Today, automakers

must assemble a greater mix of vehicles

in a shrinking number of plants.

More types of vehicles are available

than ever and new products proliferate

every year to address diverse consumer

tastes. Indeed, there are more niche

segments, platforms and nameplates on

the market today than 20 years ago.

According to J.D. Power and

Associates (Westlake Village, CA),

more than 300 different models were

available in the United States in 2008

vs. 216 in 1993. Between 1985 and

2004, average annual sales per vehicle

nameplate dropped from 106,819

to 48,626. By 2010, that number is

expected to drop to 40,000.

The goal of flexible production isto balance capacity with demand to

meet market fluctuations, says John

Lucci, a partner at Oliver Wyman

Inc. (Troy, MI), a consulting firm that

conducts the annual Harbour Report on

manufacturing efficiency. Flexibility is

more important than ever, as witnessed

by the recent spike and drop in gas

prices. As multiple propulsion systems,

ranging from gas and hybrid to electric

and diesel, proliferate in the industry,

flexible assembly lines will become

even more essential to automakers andsuppliers.

In a flexible environment, vehicles

are put together the same way, with

shared components and standardized

assembly equipment. Multiple vehicle

segmentscars, sport-utility vehicles

(SUVs), minivans, pickup trucks and

crossover vehiclescan be built off

the same architecture. Variability in

body styles and sizes, chassis sizes,

interiors and other differences are

easily accommodated. That flexibility

translates into tremendous cost savings

and reduced downtime during product

changeover.

However, flexible assembly has been

easier said than done in the auto industry.

The Big Three have been talking about

their flexible factories for years. Indeed,

back in 2002, a senior executive atFord Motor Co. (Dearborn, MI) told

ASSEMBLY that achieving genuine

flexibility is vital to any future scenario.

And were committed to getting there in

the shortest possible time.

During the last seven years, Ford has

spent millions of dollars retooling its

assembly plants and body shops. But,

last year, when the market suddenly

shifted from large pickups and SUVs

to small cars, the automaker wasnt

flexible enough to immediately shift

production like some of its Japanesecompetitors.

Ford is currently investing $75

million to retool a truck plant in

Wayne, MI, for small-car production.

Its one of three Ford plants in North

America that are being converted to

build fuel-efficient cars. At the heart

of this manufacturing transformation

is a flexible operation, claims Joe

Hinrichs, group vice president of global

As markets become less predictable, flexibility will become more critical to manufacturers.

Photo courtesy Toyota Motor Corp.



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manufacturing and labor affairs

at Ford.

Despite numerous invest-

ments, American automakers

still lag behind their Japanese

competitors when it comes toflexible manufacturing. Japa-

nese automakers are very good

at working with suppliers in

a collaborative effort, says

Lucci. That makes suppliers

more flexible. The Japanese are

also better at leveling their pro-

duction schedules. That makes

it easier to predict demand and

go to smaller batch sizes. They

also excel when it comes to

standardized work.

While U.S. assembly lines

are more flexible than they

were a decade ago, the Big

Three are still far behind the

flexibility curve, claims Laurie

Harbour-Felax, president of

the Harbour-Felax Group

(Berkley, MI). Theyve all

made huge progress, but theyre

not yet where they need to be.

Everyone is at different stages

of the game. In addition, most

suppliers are not where they

need to be.

According to Harbour-Felax, the two most flexible

automakers in the world are

Honda Motor Co. (Tokyo) and

Toyota Motor Corp. (Nagoya,

Japan). She says most of their

flexibility efforts have focused

on their body shops.

The key is the framing

station, Harbour-Felax points

out. For instance, Toyota has

developed a flexible system that

allows it to build eight different

vehicle architectures on the

same assembly line. They use

a spider-like mechanism that

welds parts from the inside of

each vehicle rather than from

the outside.

Toyota also continuously

tunes the flexibility of its

assembly plants by applying


Assembly Planbook

Medical device manufacturers rely on robots and other flexible

assembly technology. Photo courtesy Stubli Robotics

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lean tools and principles. The

automaker recently embarked on a

continuous improvement crusade at it

Takaoka plant in Toyota City, Japan,

which builds numerous vehicles, such

as the Corolla and the Vitz. When themakeover is complete, the extremely

flexible facility will build more models,

faster, on shorter assembly lines than

other Toyota plants.

By investing in a network of highly

flexible assembly plants, Honda has

enhanced its ability to quickly respond

to changes in customer demand,

while also ensuring more efficient use

of overall production capacity. The

automakers facilities in Ohio and

Ontario are capable of building cars

and light trucks on the same line.

During the recent turmoil in the auto

industry, while many manufacturers

struggled to cut capacity and scrambled to

build different vehicle platforms, Honda

calmly sat back and relied on the benefits

of its flexible production system. For

instance, earlier this year, the automaker

shifted production of its Ridgeline pickup

from Alliston, ON, to Lincoln, AL. The

Alabama plant previously assembled

the Odyssey minivan and the Pilot SUV.

Later this year, the majority of V-6

Accord sedan production will shift from

Hondas Marysville, OH, plant to theAlabama facility. The Ohio plant will

increase its production of four-cylinder

Accord sedans in mid-2009, decreasing

imports of Accords to the United States

in response to fluctuating currency rates

and shipping costs.

These moves are part of a series

of production adjustments that [we

are] making in North America to meet

customer demand for fuel-efficient

passenger cars and light trucks, as

well as to ensure the most efficient

use of [our] manufacturing capacity,

says John Mendel, executive vice

president of American Honda Motor

Co. (Torrance, CA). We are leveraging

our flexible manufacturing network to

meet the needs of our customers.

Fundamentals of Flexibility

Many of the basic principles of

flexible manufacturing used in the

auto industry also apply to other

products and production processes.

The fundamentals of flexibility hold

up whether youre making cars or

eyeglasses, says Lucci.Indeed, flexible assembly has been

successfully adopted by manufacturers

in many other industries, ranging

from consumer electronics to medical

devices. Both of those industries tend

to turn over their designs with new and

improved models after a relatively short

product life.

Any market where technology

is changing quickly, such as

cell phones, is ideal for flexible

production. As a rule of thumb,

products that contain subassemblies

that require the same basic parts and

processes as other subassemblies,

such as electric motors, generally

are good candidates for flexible

manufacturing. Thats why many

solar panel manufacturers are

implementing flexible assembly

lines as they ramp up production.

asb03094staubli.indd 1 2/12/09 8:14:54 AM



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Capital Spending

To enable flexibility, manufacturers

need equipment designed to accept

change requests. For instance, modular

conveyors are much easier to expand or

reconfigure than rotary dial machines or

other fixed automation. Other assembly

tools, such as robots, linear motors,

machine vision and motion controls,

make it easier to be flexible today than

in the past. But, theres still a lot of

misunderstanding about what flexibility

is and is not, says Harbour-Felax.

Before implementing flexible

assembly lines, manufacturing

engineers should carefully consider

all the pros and cons. For instance,

traditional assembly equipment is

limited by attributes such as processes,

motions, precision, cycle rates, part size

and weight, and component feeding.However, a dedicated machine is

typically less expensive than a flexible

machine.

There are some overlooked costs

associated with flexible equipment.

For example, wiring can be extremely

expensive; installation costs can run

anywhere from $10 to $1,000 per foot,

depending on the type of application.

On a typical assembly line, that easily

translates into thousands of dollars. If

a line needs to be reconfigured, that

work will need to be redone. Thats one

reason why some manufacturers are

investing in wireless technology.

Efficiency is another trade-off

that needs to be carefully considered.

Highly flexible systems may be unable

to match the speed of hard tooling.

Compared with a dedicated machine,

a flexible piece of equipment often has


Assembly Planbook

Automakers have focused their flexibility efforts on the body shop. Photo courtesy Ford Motor Co.

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a larger ratio of size vs. throughput. As

production volume increase, flexibility

decreases. If annual production volume

is at least 5 million units, or if the

products market life is expected to be

at least 5 years, manufacturers may bebetter off with a dedicated machine.

Slow applications tend to work the

best with flexible automation, says

Bob Rice, applications team leader

at Automation Tool Co. (Cookeville,

TN). Contrary to popular opinion,

manual operations are the ideal form

of flexibility. Robots are the biggest

flexible tool in the automation world,

but they also have limits, such as parts

feeding. Operators still do most things

better than a robot.

Parts feeding is the most

challenging thing that limits flexibility,

but new technology holds promise,

claims Mark Handelsman, industrial

marketing manager at FANUC Robotics

America Inc. (Rochester Hills, MI).

Flexible feeding and 3D vision are

becoming more prevalent, especially

in applications where parts can vary

in dimension or have a contour. Force

control is another technology that

improves flexibility.

Hard tooling solutions have their

place and will continue, notes David

Huffstetler, market manager at StubliRobotics (Duncan, SC). However,

our appetite for quick delivery of new

products demands flexibility. Choosing

the correct technology is paramount,

because of the design decisions that will

be made later.

The key to maximizing a robot arms

flexibility begins at the design stage,

explains Huffstetler. Speed, dexterity

of envelope and quality of motion

performance are often-overlooked

parameters when considering which

robot to build your cell around.

Understanding these items will attribute

to an optimized workcell. While

there is no doubt that programming

flexibility is paramount to success,

long-term reliability and capability in

the mechanics is what will be important

to realize the true benefits of a flexible

design.

Typically, the first stage of flexible

assembly is the most flexible. As volume

increases and automatic stations are

added, a machine often becomes less

flexible and requires more time and

effort to retool.Motion control also plays a key role

in achieving flexibility. Instead of using

pneumatic actuators or cams, servo-

driven actuators enable engineers to

change motions simply by entering

a new value in the control software.

However, servomotors are typically

more expensive than pneumatic

actuators.

Fixtures are also critical to flexible

assembly systems. Adjustable fixtures

feature one or more sides built on

slides so that the length and width of

the fixture can be quickly changed.

Multipiece, adjustable fixtures are

more expensive than off-the-shelf

fixtures.

Product design is critical to

flexibility, Lucci points out. You need

common access points for tooling and

common end points for fixtures. A

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01-how flexible is your factory

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