Production Line Setup

It should be easy enough for you to do your own study to determine if you need more people or not. The first thing that I would do is optimize or balance your line to the optimum efficiency. That is not a difficult task. Once that is done, analyze your down time reaction or response times with the current labor in place. Determine if the equipment is idle an excessive amount of time waiting for operators while the machine is either out of paste (in the case of a screen printer) or awaiting parts replenishment (in the case of placement equipment). If you determine that the machine sits for 10 or 15 minutes waiting for a human to perform a 2 minute task, then you have an issue. Also, a study in machine failures and the reaction times from your technicians will yield a few good points such as what equipment is giving you the most trouble and why and the time it takes to repair these faults. This lets you know who your best people are and who needs further training. It's not always better to have more people in the process. Sometimes a combination of process fine tuning and operator/technician ability enhancements will get you where you want to go.

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At each of the machines we have a log book.One of the sections that the operators fill out in the log is called machine downtime, and next to it is a comment section.Any time the machine is not placing parts they make a quick note of why they are down. This is kinda a quick way to get an idea of what is going on. Also I don't know what kind of lines you are running, but it is almost impossible for one person to tend a pick and place line by themselves.We try to keep at least two people per line.

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By centralizing to your stockroom all your feeder setups so that one team is assigned to just that, to keep all your 7 lines up and running will reduce the amount of personnel you need and increase throughput. Keep in mind a key factor. The bottleneck of an SMT line is (and should always be) the pick-and-place machine(s). Keeping this bottleneck running as many hours during a staffed shift as possible is mandatory for maximum plant efficiency and throughput. Making every effort to minimize downtime during product changeovers, feeder exhausts, maintenance and programming is the foremost critical steps to ensuring your bottleneck is kept running. Considering all mandatory downtime on an SMT line, the percentage of uptime should be closer to 75% - 80% of a staffed day. For more information on how to increase your SMT line efficiencies, download the following white paper on Profit-Driven Manufacturing. http://www.blissindustries.com/profit-drivenmanufacturing and be sure to calculate the economic returns of recapturing this capacity at http://www.blissindustries.com/calculator.

This should give you the answers to your questions or give you ammuition to present to management and the white paper will definitely help focus your efforts on the areas of the line that count the most.

If you�d like to speak with me directly, you can at 510-490-8401.

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My take on it, is that you can't exactly match labour to machine requirements. So the question is, which are you going to focus on? Keeping the machine busy or keeping the people busy. One or the other will have "waiting" periods. To me because the machine can produce so much more than a person, keep it busy, and don't worry if operators occasionally have 2 minutes here and there where they are not running full out. The main thing is to keep the machines going full out and not waiting for people.

Stephen

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Never try to convince an exec. staff to change manning policies using efficiency, it's a losing cause. Look at your audience, they probably all have MBA's which means they only look at the dollars and cents. To them those aren't production machines on the floor, they are money pumps. Not their fault, thats the way they're trained. To them the technician/operator is, in theory the best possible solution to their manning problem. More bang for the buck so to speak. The problem is that this theory is as good as the one that states that bumblebee's and hummingbirds can't fly. You might try arguing that fewer high priced tech's and more low priced machine operators would reduce downtime,meaning more product out the door, which equals more money in the pocket. This also has the added benefit of allowing the tech's to do what they're trained for, to keep the equipment in top shape and be more pro-active on preventative maintenance. This would mean fewer breakdowns, reducing operating costs (spare parts are expensive). You'll have to do some studies, but they'll prove out the point. I've yet to see this concept of owner/operators work. although someone out ther may have made it work after a fashion.

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Thanks for all the advise. I was able to recruit one person for a week to inspect boards after pick and place and was able to show a 65% efficiency increase for that line. Now I have a req. for 5 more people.

Thanks,

Nuez

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