Smart Factory Insights: Manufacturing Meets the Flintstones

As a kid, I loved “The Flintstones” cartoon series. Recently, I watched some of the old shows and as I listened to the dialogue, I saw how our social landscape has changed significantly, except for one character, “Bamm-Bamm Rubble.”

Pounding things with a club, like Bamm-Bamm, appears to be the enduring default approach of our sustainability and recycling industries, yet I believe a business opportunity exists in the form of reverse manufacturing where EMS companies and others can potentially double the scale of their activities and value in an area that appears to be locked into the Stone Age.

A very significant example is the recycling of car batteries from modern electric vehicles. I was amazed to discover that these are currently shredded in the same way we would shred limbs of overgrown trees in our gardens to make sawdust. The whole battery pack is simply put into a massive shredder. When cells are not completely or properly discharged, there are frequent fires and explosions. Following this, only about 30% of the core minerals and materials can be recovered through a series of vibrators and sieves; further recovery is possible from the “black dust” that remains. It requires special processing and is often done overseas.

Personally, and perhaps naively, I thought we had progressed a little bit since “The Flintstones.” For probably one of the most significant new products and technologies of our age, it seems we would have figured out from the start how to make the recycling end of this business sustainable, especially considering the rarity and difficulty to source these materials, as well as the cost and pollution caused by these basic recycling methods. There is then the volume to consider. Right now, such batteries need recycling only in the event of a battery failure or damage to a car in an accident. In perhaps a decade or so, we will be well on the ramp-up curve, as all of today’s electric cars reach their end of life. Other immediate examples of “Flintstones” recycling include the recovery of rare-earth magnets from products such as mechanical hard disks and speakers, where the part of the product containing the magnets is simply cut off—and Bamm-Bamm is called in.

In the case of electronic products, we have started to disassemble the products rather than just crushing them. Governments have created legislation to reduce electronic waste in landfills, such that discrete products made up of sub-assemblies, key components, and hazardous materials can be separated out by reverse assembly, then reused, recovered, or recycled. There are new technologies on the horizon to replace the PCB base FR-4 material, such that when everything has been removed, we are left with something that can actually be recycled.

The “circular economy” is often thought about in terms of the recoverability of materials which can be reused in manufacturing, but this focus is too narrow. Success will remain elusive if we continue with the way things are, as the cost of material recovery is simply not yet a viable business model in most cases. The flaw in the plan is expecting that one day the recycling business model will become realistic if it relies on materials becoming rarer and, hence, more expensive to justify the cost of recycling. By then, as most materials will have been wasted and lost, it will be too late for recycling to scale to the level needed to replace raw material availability. Therefore, the focus needs to be on creating a sustainable recycling business plan now, reducing the cost, and increasing the yield of current recycling strategies.

Car batteries are based on relatively new and evolving technologies. The focus of their design is on operational and cost performance, as well as physical attributes that make up the design of the car itself. Little or no effort appears to be made on design for recycling. One reason is that there are no common guidelines in the design and manufacturing process; everyone is doing it for themselves. There are, however, some very simple things that can be done. Knowing where key bolts are located, using standard symbols or RFID technology, for example, can reduce the manual labor for disassembly significantly, allowing disassembly by robot automation.

Today we are needlessly investing in projects that try to reverse engineer these bolts, using AI-driven vision processing, size, and torque estimations that will never become commercially viable. Instead, we need to take the simple steps to standardize, or at least document, the way things are made and should be disassembled. Another challenge is the glue used to seal the battery cells within the housing. This glue is intentionally extremely difficult to penetrate, but could be replaced with a glue that dissolves, for example, when subjected to a high concentration of hydrogen. These ideas do not limit or compromise functionality or performance, but hugely impact the ability to disassemble and recycle more efficiently. With the right approach, the circular economy is not just about material recovery, but includes the element of design for recycling.

There is, however, a significant and fundamental difference between manufacturing and recycling. Manufacturing is commercially viable due to its scale, even when considering the increasing variability of products and shortened factory-to-customer lead times. There is a full set of documentation based on the CAD design data with which to manufacture products. Manufacturing engineering, featuring the automated creation of product-specific work instructions, as well as program data for automated processes, should now be completely automated for most manufacturing companies. Manufacturing is, therefore, a known, continuous, efficient, and repeated process.

In the recycling industry, by contrast, products become end-of-life randomly. Almost every unit presented for processing is completely different from the one before. There is no provision for access to any of the details of assembly or disassembly methods, or of the material content—including embedded chemicals, and locations of key materials and components—all of which are key elements needed from the design and manufacturing data. As we have seen with the massive increase in software automation for MES in recent years, we are now on the precipice of “RES,” meaning recycling execution, rather than manufacturing. This is simply MES in reverse gear. Examples already exist in the best MES tools available today, which include RMA/MRO processing, where products from the field are repaired, overhauled, upgraded, or remanufactured into other products. While this is currently happening only at the high end of the market, there are lessons to be learned by the industry.

Due to the random nature of recycling, and with the need for product data from many OEMs to be available to recycling companies, there is an element of security and risk of IP leakage. However, hardware and software technologies exist that uniquely identify products, and allow access to only the needed data of their design and manufacturing in a way that does not reveal intellectual property and other private information. These technologies are being utilized and developed for the supply-network applications supporting manufacturing, but really, the greatest need will be in the recycling industry, which should be included in such projects. After all, materials and elements from recycling are then intended to go back into the supply network.

Revolutions in recycling do not happen overnight, but we all need to be headed in the same, logical direction, rather than just hoping that Bamm-Bamm will continue to be the answer. Let’s hope that, instead, MES technology for disassembly will become as important as for manufacturing. It will include automation with Smart hardware and software and create many new high-skill jobs with built-in security and trust, building the future we imagine not only for future generations, but in knowing that we are making the world better. Before it’s too late.

This column originally appeared in the April 2023 issue of SMT007 Magazine.

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2023

Smart Factory Insights: Manufacturing Meets the Flintstones

04-19-2023

As a kid, I loved “The Flintstones” cartoon series. Recently, I watched some of the old shows and as I listened to the dialogue, I saw how our social landscape has changed significantly, except for one character, “Bamm-Bamm Rubble.” Pounding things with a club, like Bamm-Bamm, appears to be the enduring default approach of our sustainability and recycling industries, yet I believe a business opportunity exists in the form of reverse manufacturing where EMS companies and others can potentially double the scale of their activities and value in an area that appears currently to be locked into the Stone Age.

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Smart Factory Insights: Differentiation, Community, and Composability

03-08-2023

Are progress and evolution in the industry driven by collective hive minds, business opportunity, and thought leadership, or is it just through random events? I believe it’s all the above. The real question about progress is better related to the strategy of how we balance differentiation with our contribution to common industry goals that bring about business opportunity, and then how we apply that same strategy to the tools and services that we use. Let’s look both internally and externally into how we control and actively reduce risks and threats to our business.

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Smart Factory Insights: An Unblinkered View

01-11-2023

For many, blindly going where no one has gone before is just a normal day in the factory. As new products are introduced, manufacturing is expected to provide perfect products based primarily on assumptions and reverse engineering. Without accurate and complete product data, there can be no engineering automation, which results in a complete waste of energy. This should no longer be acceptable in the industry. A lack of adequate contextualizing product information creates unnecessary cost and risk in manufacturing operations, thereby limiting competitiveness. What’s behind the industry’s reluctance to change on this matter?

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2022

Smart Factory Insights: AIs Without Context Are Dumb

12-14-2022

We often discuss the emergence of artificial intelligence in terms of how it will save us or, if movies are to be believed, how it might terminate us. The countless annoyances AIs inject into our daily lives can make us wonder: Do they already have a plan? We need to adequately consider context versus privacy when deciding how to integrate AI technology into our lives, especially within our factories.

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Smart Factory Insights: Clinging to Best Practices in Worst-case Scenarios

11-22-2022

We develop best practices to ensure consistent and optimal operational performance, quality, and consistency. The nemesis of this activity is change, which leads to those best practices becoming stale and eventually becoming shackles to the operation. We must take a more modern approach to best practices, one that embraces the ability to change, and is flexible and adaptable to cope with the unexpected (which are actually expected) issues. Knowing how to create change-centric manufacturing best practices comes from experience.

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Smart Factory Insights: The Progress of Machine Intelligence

09-27-2022

Adversity drives focus, realization, and then innovation. This is especially true in manufacturing, which has felt the effects of recent challenges. For decades, manufacturing has been overly focused on short-term business objectives, with little regard for risk and adaptability. This oversight has persisted into automation projects and digital transformation initiatives. Innovators today realize that there is no way back, that we must embrace the intelligence—the silver linings—that we must have learned.

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Smart Factory Insights: Zombie Cars: The Next Pandemic Is Digital

07-20-2022

In the manufacturing world, we increasingly rely on internal and outsourced security partners to keep our IT networks safe. One report stated that as many as 50% of manufacturing companies have already been the target of ransomware attempts. Therefore, there is more work to do, especially on the neglected OT network. Industry requirements, such as CMMC, invoke costs and difficulties. But like traceability in the past, with the right preparation, this “burden” can be turned around to become a near zero cost, or even a benefit.

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Smart Factory Insights: Fractional Materials and High-Mix Manufacturing

05-25-2022

We used to discuss manufacturing paradigms in terms of high- or low-mix, coupled with high- or low-volume, with many shades of grey in between. Now, we have a new dimension, that of high-volatility, as key dependencies on labour, materials and logistics contribute challenges to production, which in turn, is subject to the volatility of customer demand. Material management more than ever before, is being either the key enabler for business success, or your nemesis in not being able to achieve the necessary recovery plan if not thought out properly.

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Smart Factory Insights: Has the Industry 4.0 Gold Rush Ended?

04-06-2022

Industry 4.0, though only five years old, already has a checkered history. With buzzwords flying, existing technologies—re-branded as Industry 4.0 solutions—have been in demand. Manufacturers embarked on the Industry 4.0 “gold rush” to gather as much data as possible, and by whatever means necessary, to get those nuggets of smart manufacturing credibility. Today, the more mature approach of Industry 4.0 is emerging with consideration of a real return on investment (ROI) as well as sustainability. Taking advantage of such maturity may have been the smartest option all along.

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Smart Factory Insights: CFX IIoT Open-Source Hardware

03-09-2022

The IPC Connected Factory Exchange standard, CFX, has triggered a revolution in the way that industrial machines communicate in a secure, IIoT-based, plug and play environment. Attention now is on how CFX can be connected to older, “dumber” machines, bringing 100% visibility and control across the whole manufacturing floor, thereby avoiding the numerous technical and financial pitfalls historically experienced.

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2021

Smart Factory Insights: Digital Transcendence—Fear of The Unknown

12-22-2021

The first three industrial revolutions have brought us automation of physical tasks through adoption of mechanical and electrical machines, the benefit of which has been quite easy to appreciate. Industry 4.0 automation, however, is driven almost exclusively from the digital realm, representing a whole new world of intangibility. With manufacturing being rather averse to unplanned change or risk, unless there are very compelling reasons, how do we get to fully trust digital technology needed for our businesses today, taking us toward manufacturing digital transcendence?

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Smart Factory Insights: The Costs of Legacy Thinking

12-01-2021

As humans, we learn facts, gain impressions, create solutions, put practices into place, and move onto our next challenge. Over time, our intent is to create a legacy of value, but in many cases, we are creating legacies in a different sense. Our knowledge, experience, and creations age or become superseded, but there is resistance to replace or update. An increasing gap develops between perception and reality. Younger, more agile peers take advantage, get ahead, and we look away, thinking that they don’t know what they are doing. Though a natural human phenomenon, decision-makers in manufacturing today need to bear this mind more than ever.

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Smart Factory Insights: Hands-off Manufacturing

07-12-2021

The use of automation has not eliminated causes of unreliability, nor defects, which ironically continues to drive the need for humans to be hands-on, even as part of SMT operations. There is clearly something missing, so cue our digital twin.

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Smart Factory Insights: Me and My Digital Twin

04-12-2021

A fully functional digital twin involves more than it may initially seem. At first we tend to think about access to information. There is a great deal of trust to be taken into account when creating a digital twin, as there is scope for its use both for good and evil.

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2020

Smart Factory Insights: Changing Roles in the Digital Factory

12-01-2020

Experts once required to have a knowledge of specialized materials and processes are giving way to those experienced in the application of automated and computerized solutions. Michael Ford describes how it is time to reinvent the expectations and qualifications that we seek in managers, engineers, and production operators to attract and support a different kind of manufacturing innovation.

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Smart Factory Insights: Smart Factories—Indirectly the Death of Test and Inspection

11-04-2020

In the smart factory, test and inspection are reinvented, contributing direct added value, playing a new and critically important role where defects are avoided through the use of data, and creating a completely different value proposition. Michael Ford explains how the digitalized Deming Theory can be explained to those managing budgets and investments to ensure that we move our operations forward digitally in the best way possible.

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Smart Factory Insights: Trust in Time

08-05-2020

We’ve all heard of “just in time” as applied to the supply chain, but with ongoing disruption due to COVID-19, increasing risk motivates us to return to the bad habit of hoarding excess inventory. Michael Ford introduces the concept of "trust in time"—a concept that any operation, regardless of size or location, can utilize today.

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Smart Factory Insights: It’s Not What You Have—It’s How You Use It

06-03-2020

According to the reports, all the machines in the factory are performing well, but the factory itself appears to be in a coma, unable to fulfill critical delivery requirements. Is this a nightmare scenario, or is it happening every day? Trying to help, some managers are requesting further investment in automation, while others are demanding better machine data that explains where it all went wrong. Digital technology to the rescue, or is it making the problem worse?

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Smart Factory Insights: Seeing Around Corners

04-20-2020

Each of us has limitations, strengths, and weaknesses. Our associations with social groups—including our friends, family, teams, schools, companies, towns, counties, countries, etc.—enable us to combine our strengths into a collective, such that we all contribute to an overall measure of excellence. There is strength in numbers. Michael Ford explains how this most human of principles needs to apply to IIoT, smart manufacturing, and AI if we are to reach the next step of smart manufacturing achievement.

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Smart Factory Insights: Size Matters—The Digital Twin

02-01-2020

In the electronics manufacturing space, at least, less is more. Michael Ford considers what the true digital twin is really all about—including the components, uses, and benefits—and emphasizes that it is not just an excuse to show some cool 3D graphics.

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Smart Factory Insights: What You No Longer Need to Learn

01-14-2020

Naturally evolving layers of technological applications allow us to build and make progress, layer by layer, rather than staying relatively stagnant with only incremental improvement. To gain ground in manufacturing, Michael Ford explains how we need to embrace next-layer hardware and software technologies now so that we can focus on applying these solutions as part of a digital factory.

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2019

Smart Factory Insights: Dromology—Time-space Compression in Manufacturing

11-25-2019

Dromology is a new word for many, including Microsoft Word. Dromology resonates as an interesting way to describe changes in the manufacturing process due to technical and business innovation over the last few years, leading us towards Industry 4.0. Michael Ford explores dromology in the assembly factory today.

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Smart Factory Insights: Trends and Opportunities at SMTAI 2019

10-14-2019

SMTAI is more than just a simple trade show. For me, it is an opportunity to meet face to face with colleagues and friends in the industry to talk about and discuss exciting new industry trends, needs, technologies, and ideas.

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Smart Factory Insights: Recognizing the Need for Change

09-24-2019

We are reminded many times in manufacturing, that "you cannot fix what you cannot see" and "you cannot improve what you cannot measure." These annoying aphorisms are all very well as a motivational quip for gaining better visibility of the operation. However, the reality is that there is a lot going on that no-one is seeing.

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Accelerating Tech: Standards-driven, Digital Design Flow for Industry 4.0

04-24-2019

The term “fragmented manufacturing” is a good way to describe current assembly manufacturing challenges in an Industry 4.0 environment. Even in Germany, productivity reportedly continues to decline. To reach the upside of Industry 4.0, data flows relating to design play a major role—one that brings significant opportunity to the overall assembly business.

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The Truth Behind AI

02-28-2019

The term "artificial intelligence" or "AI" has become a source of confusion for many—heralded as part of Industry 4.0, yet associated with the threat of automation replacing human workers. AI is software rather than hardware, and it's time to put these elements of AI into context, enabling us as an industry to embrace the opportunities that so-called AI represents without being drawn in, or pushed away, by the hype.

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