|
Original Date: 06/05/2006
Revision Date: / /
Information : Valor Optimization Software
After Coralville production personnel conducted a market survey of software vendors that specialize in surface mount technology line balancing, the vendor Valor and its Trilogy 5000 Line Balancer software was selected. As a result, the Coralville surface mount technology circuit board production line benefited with reduced machine cycle times, an increase in on-time deliveries, and an increase in quality.
Rockwell Collins’ Coralville facility Process Center is in the business of manufacturing circuit boards for its parent company – Rockwell Collins. Circuit boards produced use both through-hole and surface mount technology (SMT). Before the introduction of Valor optimization software, Coralville personnel used a “cut-and-paste” approach on active machine programming code to manually rearrange the placement operations for optimal SMT parts-placement orders. This manual method took from 4-8 hours to accomplish, was prone to errors, and frequently did not result in an optimal SMT part-placement order.
Toward the end of 2004, Coralville production personnel conducted a market survey on software vendor products that would optimize this process. Their survey resulted in the selection of the software vendor Valor and its Trilogy 5000 Line Balancer software. In January 2005 Rockwell Collins implemented the newly acquired software, which uses existing machine programs and groups top and bottom circuit board side setups into one set-up operation. The Valor Trilogy 5000 algorithms have optimized feeder setup and component placement paths, reduced circuit board changeover times between board sides, effectively utilized balanced feeders, and minimized machine cycle times.
As Coralville used the new Valor Trilogy 5000, machine cycle time was reduced 10%-15%, while daily changeovers increased from 56 in FY2004 to 70 in FY2005. Work in process decreased from 1,800,000 units in FY2004 to 1,500,000 in FY2005. On-time deliveries increased from 98.4% in FY2004 to 99.1% in FY2005, and quality defects per million decreased from 134 in FY2004 to 106 in FY2005.
For more information see the
Point of Contact for this survey.
|
