ESCATEC were bought in to value engineer costly and inefficient product designs. The NPI team at ESCATEC applied DfM (Design for Manufacturing), to isolate multiple product enhancements and improve the effectiveness of the data loggers.
Modifications were shared with the client and designs were prepared for the next stage. The entire turnaround time from receiving the initial designs to making recommended changes took less than two weeks.
ESCATEC were able to lever decades of expertise to scale up production in record time:
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Setting up new, additional production lines
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Intensive training programme for the newly recruited staff
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Preparing multiple new workstations
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Preparing jigs and fixtures
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Identifying, implementing and validating process
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Full testing
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Overseeing quality improvements
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Ensuring regulatory and quality standards are met
ESCATEC also invested in cutting-edge machinery to automate the soldering, gluing, and screwing processes for the product to scale up production and accelerate delivery time:
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The Inertec soldering machine reduced cycle time by 1.44 minutes per board, requiring half the number of operators compared to manual soldering.
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The labor-intensive gluing process is now robotic, reducing total cycle time by 1.2 minutes per board, while needing 22 fewer production operators.
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The auto screwing capability has also reduced cycle time by 0.85 minutes per board, replacing the previous manual screwing process that required ten operators per shift.
The start of mass production was hugely challenging. Further modifications of the designs were required, some processes had to be revamped while machinery and equipment had to be further calibrated.