CASE STUDY: EPE CORPORATIONAegis Enables EPE to Deliver Tier-One Information and Control

INTRODUCTIONWhen faced with factory information challenges, manufacturers traditionally responded in one of three ways: They might purchase a large customized commercial software system that results in endless costs as result of customization. Alternatively, they might embark on an in-house solution built by their own IT personnel. The final way did not involve software but rather brute force. They would employ a labor-intensive and slow procedural set of solutions that limit corporate growth. These responses often occurred in correlation to the size of the corporation.

Aegis MOS brings a new approach. A manufacturing operations software system of ample breadth and depth to not only deliver functionality usually reserved for highly customized systems, but also offering that capability without need for customization. Capability without crushing costs and lengthy deployment.

This case study explores the real-world application of this new approach to the information challenge in electronics assembly within a New England, USA EMS provider, EPE Corporation. Their implementation of the Aegis Manufacturing Operations Software system enabled EPE to gain greater functional and analytical benefits than a highly customized system such as used by tier-one providers at low cost and without increasing personnel to support it. This article explores the background of the emergence of MOS, the benefits as result of MOS becoming a “single system”, and the capabilities and value EPE gains from such a system in their corporate operations.

THE EMERGENCE OF A MANUFACTURING OPERATIONS SYSTEM (MOS)The need for a comprehensive software solution to address the challenges facing manufacturing operations regarding information is not unique to electronics assembly. The independent software analyst firms such as AMR, Gartner, Aberdeen and ARC began coining terms some years ago for manufacturing systems that go beyond just “MES” (manufacturing execution systems) or “NPI” (new product introduction). These original concepts were focused on the discrete or “system build” type of manufacturing rather than being specific to electronics assembly. The term for such a holistic solution tends to be either “Manufacturing Operations System” (MOS) or “Manufacturing Operations Management” (MOM). For the purposes of this study, the term MOS will be employed, but they essentially refer to the same software concept. A software system addressing the factory itself, filling the traditional gap left by ERP and PLM systems and giving “operations” the enterprise-level solution needed for their information, reporting, monitoring, traceability and process control requirements.

Factory-wide monitoring, traceability, reporting, quality management and materials control no longer require expensive and highly customized software systems used by the tier-one providers. Aegis Manufacturing Operations Software enables any manufacturer

to deliver more capability than tier-one providers while remaining cost-effective and eliminating the requirement for an army of IT personnel. World-class visibility and control is available without endless software customization and report development costs. EPE Corporation, a New England Defense and high-reliability EMS provider, leverages their Aegis MOS system to outperform tier-one EMS companies.

BUSINESS PROFILE AND SYSTEM SELECTION

Business Profile: EPE Corporation, •Manchester NH, USA. Privately held EMS provider focused on defense, system integration and high reliability commercial products.Primary Business Driver in Selection: •Wanted to maintain quality and reporting during rapid company growth without adding IT and engineering staff.Alternatives Considered: In-house •development, customized MES systems, ERP system module.Corporate Constraints During System •Selection: Limited IT resources, high growth, cost consciousness.

AEGIS FUNCTIONS IN USE AT EPENPI Automation•Real-Time Unit Tracking•Materials Control (at risk)•Machine Data Acquisition for •Quality & PerformanceFactory-Wide Paperless & Version Control•Deviation Management•System Build & Genealogy Control•User-Designed Real-Time Dashboards•User-Designed Reports•Statistical Process Control•Certificates of Conformance•

FINAL RESULTSSystem delivered on cost with zero •customization.System operates without an in-house •IT department or dedicated support resources.Delivers greater information availability •than systems built and maintained at great expense by tier-one providers.

The concept of a holistic software solution to act as a “third pillar” of major IT systems alongside ERP for business operations and PLM for R&D (for OEM’s) is an important one. It is generally accepted that individual software tool proliferation throughout factories leads to significant reporting, cost and maintenance problems. A single system is conceptually superior. While this is accurate, the actual manner in which MOS systems evolved did not necessarily achieve the cost benefits that come to mind when one pursues system consolidation. The cost savings were not realized because systems positioned as “MOS” systems were in fact productized and packaged collections of software tools that in the whole fulfill a large functional scope of MOS, but were in fact separated subsystems yet again. The need for customization and integration of these tools to fulfill their objectives in the factory brought the costs and complexity right back to the aforementioned model of large scale system customization pursued by the tier-one manufacturers in the past.

SINGLE-SYSTEM MOS: COMPREHENSIVE FUNCTIONAL SCOPE AT LOW COSTFor MOS systems to have both the broad functional and analytical capability across all of operations, but also be of reasonable cost, true consolidation was necessary. The technical reason for this is simply that a singular software system requires no integration and customization within its own scope of functionality. There exist no separate systems to join in order to achieve an objective or mine data. It exists on one central server on one data schema. The only integration is to third party systems like ERP or PLM, and in many deployments the customer may not even wish to do so. A truly singular MOS system can deploy and deliver the benefits of its design with modification.

Perhaps more than any individual functional capability of the system, this true consolidation was the innovation that made it possible for EPE to gain the benefits of a powerful information system without the costs typically associated with such systems.

The MOS system explored in this article and in use at EPE was deployed and continues its use every day without any code customization whatsoever, and consequently EPE did not bear any of the endless costs of such customization. Nor did the installation suffer the delays and deployment problems that are inherent to complicated customization efforts. Every function, benefit and capability discussed in reference to the EPE deployment was deployed as “out-of-box” functionality in the system. EPE adjusts the system to their business and manufacturing processes through its user interface, not through customization or code modification.

THE EPE BUSINESS CHALLENGE LEADING TO MOS ADOPTIONEPE Corporation is a third-generation EMS provider focused on high-reliability commercial and defense electronics extending up through total system integration and box build. Their President, J.D. Bell has driven toward growth since taking the reins of EPE, recently culminating in the opening of their much larger facility in Manchester NH. As Mr. Bell was building his strategy for growth, he recognized the intense reporting and analytic load his customers were placing upon EPE on a daily basis. The demands for reports and analysis and traceability was time consuming and labor intensive. He sponsored the investigation of software systems to address this issue with a specific requirement before all else; any system chosen by EPE must meet the control and visibility demands of their customers, even as the Company scaled, without scaling the engineering or support staff required to maintain and operate it. EPE saw their growth coming and was dedicated to expanding their business without scaling IT or engineering staff just to keep up with information demands.

EPE explored modules for their ERP system as well as building their own software tools. These options were compared against mainstream “MES” tools but also against the Aegis MOS system.

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EPE utilized the Aegis NPI engine for many years to develop shop floor documenta-tion and machine programs from CAD. This NPI engine forms the ”front-end” of the MOS system, so expanding their installation to encompass the shop-floor and vis-ibility functions was compelling.

EPE ultimately chose to move ahead with this MOS system as result of a few key findings. Real-world demonstrations revealed the “out-of-box” capability of the system was indeed what they required without need for customization. Discussions with other users revealed there would be no need to hire or dedicate IT staff to its operation. The analyst firms’ survey results showed how the total cost of ownership was in fact half other solutions by eliminating customization. And perhaps most compelling were the reporting and dashboard capabilities. Once again, EPE themselves could build their own dashboards and reports without IT knowledge or customization. All these factors fit J.D. Bell’s vision of selecting a system that minimized personnel overhead both initially and recurring.

FACTORY LIFE WITH EPE’S MOS SYSTEMThe EPE deployment begins with engineering stations in the factory office. Incoming customer data is processed within the MOS system in a workgroup mode. BOM’s are cleaned by some personnel while the route and quality plan is designed by others. Visual, interactive and CAD-aware documentation is largely automated in these stations while machine programs are rapidly created. Machine libraries are managed over the network directly to the machine servers via the MOS system, and programs are dispatched directly to the machines when finished. Every aspect of the MOS system operates on a single server and database, supporting controlled, traceable collaboration regarding new product launch.

Prepared jobs are launched to the shop-floor system only after an electronic approval process is conducted. EPE is ensured only reviewed and appropriate customer jobs are made available to the shop floor in this way, and the approval records themselves become part of the holistic traceability of the MOS system.

On the shop floor, as jobs initiate, the system presents the components, tooling, chemicals, and machine programs required at each station. It locks the process until they are verified. The visuals built by engineers in the office are now presented digitally under proper revision control, eliminating shop-floor documentation management overhead and risk. If emergencies arise and customers demand an immediate change, the MOS system assists the targeting of process deviations and sends them instantly to all applicable shop-floor stations.

As the process executes, data flows back to the MOS system from myriad sources. The simple scan points of each product movement provide active WIP visibility and performance monitoring. The machines emit real-time information streams supporting fault, performance and OEE monitoring. Test rigs send their measurement information back for diagnostics, SPC, and traceability. As the units move through AOI or AXI, the event streams from inspection enter the MOS system, but then the repair terminals of the MOS system present the visual of the product with quality indictments displayed upon them so operators can easily move through corrective actions. Hand assembly stations use the visuals to expedite their activities while scanning units along the route and being warned if any unit is out of sequence or out of route. Again, every event and data stream emerging from the process is related automatically to the units present when they occurred, building a deeply rich and detailed total traceability set per unit.

The capabilities mentioned above regard the actual system operation and benefits to the functional tasks of getting data to the floor and operating the factory. The system only becomes maximally useful when the information flowing into it is analyzed and presented so EPE staff can take action upon it. That is where the MOS system’s analytics capabilities become valuable.

Engineers utilize the NPI engine of the MOS system to design the entire process and all supporting information required to execute it.

The MOS system verifies tooling, chemicals, feeders, operators and machine programs before enabling the process.

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EPE’s MOS system leverages the information it collects in four primary means, all configured solely by EPE without coding, scripting or involvement of the vendor or integrators. The most active means involves the eventing/alarming system. Quality or performance thresholds and events are mapped by EPE to system events. These events can be the automatic generation of an “adaptive email” with contextual content, an automatically generated and emailed report, data sent to third party systems, or even line stops or operator notifications. With these configurable alarms, EPE reduces the personnel required to react instantly to process drift and catastrophic conditions, often difficult to detect even when standing on the factory floor itself.

The next level in the scale from “most active” visibility is the real-time dashboard system. EPE configures their own real-time dashboards much like one designs a PowerPoint slide. Gauges, graphs, pictures and tables of a vast variety of analyzed information are “dragged” onto a palette, pointed to a process station or machine, and come to life. Unlimited numbers of these dashboards are maintained. At EPE, each line has a flat panel display with real-time gauges and the end of the plant sections have operations-level views of active jobs and progress. Even predictive job shipment and timing information is calculated and updated in real-time.

Reports may also be scheduled. At EPE, managers and engineers receive PDF reports on their smarthpones and inboxes each morning by the time they arrive. Each one built and scheduled without customization or SQL coding.

Outputs for engineers, management, and customers are also key to a competitive operation. EPE’s MOS system provides data retrieval and visualization extending beyond the traditional concept of reporting. They use a graphical interface to retrieve, group, analyze, and visualize data without need for IT or SQL knowledge. Any data interrogation done in the past may be template for instant recall on screen in the future. Then drill-down through the charts is point-and-click. A capability used in staff meetings to drill through WIP history, active jobs on the floor, quality information, SPC, etc. in a collaborative style.

If particular data sets are interesting to EPE or their customers, properly formatted reports may be then developed graphically using the data mined in the process noted previously. These reports are stored for immediate access on the web or through the system.

EPE’s MOS system encompasses the full gamut of their operations from product prep and launch to execution and finally to leveraging the information through a variety of means ranging from fully automated and real-time to historical and report-based.

IMPACT TO EPE’S BUSINESS OPERATIONSMOS deployment at EPE enabled them to scale their volume and customer count without the overhead increase normally associated with more reporting and process control needs. The Company has moved themselves and the MOS system to a new factory to accommodate this growth. They have no dedicated IT staff supporting the system and did not add engineers to operate it. The line operators are enthusiastic about the interface and the information they are provided because they no longer search for information and bear the risk of finding the wrong information, as that is impossible now. When asked for the time involved in daily report compilation for quality and production monitoring, the answer is “zero” as the reports are all fully automated. The data available immediately to EPE customers is much richer than possible before and yet requires no overhead.

EPE displays real-time, rotating dashboards above each line and at the end of each factory section to provide actionable data to their operators.

Managers and engineers receive automated reports on their smartphones without user intervention each day.

EPE leverages the interactive and collaborative data mining capability of their MOS system in staff reviews to drive improvement using accurate and current data.

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BUSINESS IMPACT (BEFORE AEGIS MOS) (AFTER AEGIS MOS)

Report Generation 20 hours/week 0 hours/week

WIP Control and Management Manual Automatic

Response Time to Customer Data Inquiry Hours Minutes

Revenue Growth During Study Period 58%

Growth in Engineering Support Staff During Study Period 9%

Growth in Quality Management Staff During Study Period 11%

Percentage of Contracts Earned in Part by Aegis MOS Capabilities 33%

DEPLOYMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION

Deployment Speed

Time-to-Value Deployment Duration 2mo. to data collection, reporting and main functionality.

Total Integration 6mo. to full utilization in business improvements.

Total Project Cost Vs. Original Quotation

Cost Increase/Decrease Vs. Original Quote On budget.

Personnel Required to Deploy and Support on Ongoing Basis

Dedicated Personnel During Deployment One person for the first 2 months only.

Personnel Dedicated to Ongoing Operation 0

Information Outputs

Reports Total 212

Reports Requiring Customization or Coding or SQL 0

Reports in Active Daily Operational Use 48

Automated Reports Dispatched Daily 30

Real-Time Dashboards Total 87

Real-Time Dashboards in Daily Use 12

Dashboards Requiring Customization or Coding 0

Number of Stations in Use Factory Wide

Route Stations in Daily Use 172

INFORMATION VOLUME

Overall System Data Transactions

Unit Movements Per Day 4,700 per day on average during 2010.

NPI Processes Resident in System 951

Average Daily Incoming Data Transactions > 6633 transactions per day on average.

Real-Time Machine Data Acquisition

Yestech AOI, MYDATA > 2250 transactions per day on average.

Database Size

Data Storage Volume as of September 2010 42GB

EPE’S RETURN ON INVESTMENTKey Performance Metrics From 2008 - 2010

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LEVERAGING MOS IN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENTEPE leverages the MOS system to continue their growth but that are not related necessarily to the original design intent of the system. They are using their system as a key part of their new business development. It has proven a sales and marketing benefit for them as the system is omnipresent from the office to the factory floor, and manifests in obvious ways via dashboards and terminals throughout the entire Company. EPE notes that prospective customers and even partners are struck by a level of information and process control not seen even in the tier-one EMS providers, and this continues to help them along their growth path. Their business development VP once noted that it’s one matter to be able to show a prospective customer a variety of reports that took weeks to code, but it is an entirely different and more powerful matter to ask them what they want and be able to build that output before their eyes and render it in a real-time dashboard that took form in front of them. That’s where EPE leverages the system to outstrip their competitors; supporting ever-changing information requirements immediately without passing the costs of doing so through to their customers.

DEPLOYMENT EXPERIENCE AND TRUE TOTAL COSTEPE’s system was installed and delivered its agreed functional capabilities within the total project investment and quotation. No code was modified to fulfill their re-quirements, nor is their system a “branch” or “unique” to EPE to support their goals. Theirs is the identical code base shared by the entire customer base of the vendor worldwide, and therefore they have migrated through several major upgrades without loss of data or interruption. The costs did not creep, nor were they subjected to ongoing customization fees. Their costs are contained and predictable.

CONCLUSIONEPE Corporation’s Aegis MOS system is now an important part of their functional operations as well as their business development. Their customers enjoy greater visibility and confidence than would normally be achievable even with endlessly expensive customized solutions, and yet they have not had to dedicate any IT overhead or scale engineering to deliver these benefits. EPE is leveraging the new MOS concept of a highly configurable system of great functional depth to grow efficiently and distinguish themselves with their customers and in their markets.

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Aegis has been granted the highest evel of Microsoft partnership available. Microsoft Gold Partnership status requires independent lab testing of Aegis products as well as educational and testing certification of Aegis staff in IT-related competencies. This ensures Aegis products will function properly in your IT environment, and that Aegis engineers are fully qualified to work with your IT staff and within your IT infrastructure.

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