Analysis of PCB Factory Automation and Industry 4.0 Planning




The main purpose of PCB factory automation and smart factory design investment is to save labor costs, improve product yield, reduce operation intensity and effectively arrange production in order to achieve effective coordination of various processes and optimal operation of the factory. Secondly, it can also control the inventory, reduce the waste in the production process and the loss caused by the transfer.
Thirteen years ago, the development of the circuit board industry was not as rapid as today. Labor costs are relatively low, and automation equipment technology has certain technical barriers. The relative cost is relatively high, so that the factory chooses low in the pursuit of short-term benefits. Labor cost model. Through the maturation of automation technology, labor costs increase year by year, and the decline in product technology and profits gradually decreases. Automation is one of the most effective means to reduce costs and increase profits.

Misunderstanding
Although the realization of automated production is an important means to improve the company's profitability, but many companies have some misunderstandings in the selection of automated equipment.
 First, many enterprise decision makers believe that automation equipment is to replace people and replace labor at a certain position, and does not consider the transfer and connection between processes. For example, a very simple receipt board machine (also considering the equipment price) is added above the electroplating post-processing line, and the receiving board is a simple flat trolley, and an automatic putting machine is added online before the processing and grinding board. The perforated plate of the board release machine can only be an L-shaped plate rack, and the board needs to be manually converted in the middle. Sometimes it is often polished and the board is stacked too high, which often causes the board release machine to be inseparable. Greatly reduces the efficiency of automation.
Many customers whose current production capacity is below 20,000 square meters, most of the product structure is very complicated, there are many specifications of material number, different plate thickness, different size, many are small production capacity, may be a grinding line in the same time period There are several possible board specifications. This puts a great test on the requirements for automation equipment. It may be recognized during manual operations, but automated equipment has not yet completely replaced people. At present, when automatic plate laying machines in developing countries work on the same carrier board for different plate thicknesses, automatic plate laying cannot be stabilized, but enterprises attribute all the instability of automation equipment to the equipment itself.
 Third, the pre-design layout of many factories is unreasonable. There are still many companies that think so, first of all, the location of all the main equipment, the location of the horizontal line and other equipment, and then the room layout, if there is still correct, it should be based on the site and choose a reasonable main equipment technology In accordance with the planning of the automation equipment, the logistics direction of the trolley equipment, and then the room separation, to achieve smooth automation of equipment logistics.
 Fourth, the factory's future main business is uncertain, and the equipment movement caused by the process uncertainty of the equipment is also a great variable factor for the configuration of automation equipment. Many factories plan to do Class A products in the early stage, and choose the process equipment related to Class A products, and then change to Class B products. The equipment related to Class A products will be transformed and replaced before this causes the configuration of automation equipment to be unable to reach. The original planning effect. But in general, the short-term energy saving is a common line, which leads to the fact that neither the outer layer collector nor the inner layer collector previously planned can achieve the general purpose.
Fifth, many equipment manufacturers and enterprises are now vigorously developing Industry 4.0 equipment in order to quickly occupy the market, which has achieved the purpose of propaganda and pre-emption, and many companies are also eagerly trying to carry out factory intelligent transformation, hoping to achieve the expected results. However, the stability of the manufacturer's equipment, the rationality of the company's product structure, the connection between the equipment purchased by the enterprise in the early stage and the current automation equipment, the internal communication between the previous factory ERP and the modern industrial process equipment, and the logistics direction channel planned in the early stage are all determined. The main factor for the realization of a modern smart factory.
However, we can still work in this direction. Through the stability of the equipment and the continuous optimization of the planning, it is certain that the subsequent factories will be intelligent.

Suggest
Considering the above points, I would like to give some suggestions to enterprises who want to deploy automation equipment and plan smart factories in the future:
 1) Determine the main product process, and arrange the process and automation equipment reasonably;
 2) The choice of automation equipment considers the connection between the manufacturing processes to reduce product defects and manual workload caused by the replacement of additional vehicles;
 3) Reasonable design of temporary storage capacity planning to reduce the inconvenience caused by intelligent AGV logistics vehicles;
 4) The use of existing new technology equipment to ensure a more seamless connection of automation;
  5) The connection between the internal ERP data of the factory and the field equipment parameters realizes a reasonable process coordination;
 6) The parameters of product technology are more effectively communicated and executed on site;
 7) Re-plan the interior of the factory in combination with the previous equipment to achieve semi-automatic and full automation;
 8) Increase the understanding of modern smart factories and automation equipment manufacturers, and achieve a plan for realizing reasonable automation according to their own conditions
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