ManEx Minute - 2010 Sep - WireHarness Manufacturing
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INSPIRATIONS
 
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September, 2010

Dear David,  

Thanks for the ideas and suggestions in our most recent annual survey.  We continue to strive to make the newsletter more effective and valuable.

One of the first improvements is the addition of a poll to help us determine future topics.  You can vote on the topic by clicking the "Future Topic Poll" to the right or the left bar. For future issues, it will only be in the left bar.

I recently read an article in USA Today talking about "onshoring" or moving manufacturing back to the US.  While OEMs will continue to build offshore, many are realizing the benefits of keeping it local.  Local manufacturers can be more responsive, produce better quality, and are more and more price competative.

I have had the opportunity to visit several customers over the last couple months.  I am excited to see business starting to recover.  Instead of wondering how to keep enough work, many are wondering how to work enough to get it done. It appears that the remaining companies will have plenty of work and that is good for everyone.

Lets keep that momentum and prepare for success.  We want to help in any way we can.  If you have a challenge and want help, please take a moment to let us know and see if others can help you work through it.

As always, we look forward to your participation and feedback as you gain new insights and become a more effective provider of Electronic Manufacturing Services.

Sincerely,

David Sharp
ManEx, Inc.
FEATUREBusiness Case - Production Control
Wire Harness Manufacturing

North Eastern Company (NE Company)* works in both the PCB assembly and wire harness manufacturing industries.  They have been able to successfully utilize their ERP system for production of PCB assemblies and material control for both PCB assembly and wire harness manufacturing.  However, they have had to do all production control for wire harnesses outside of the system.

Manufacturing wire harnesses is a little like an EMS company making the components and then placing them on the PCB. Not only do the manufacturers have to worry about customer specifications and drawings, but they have to manage fluctuations in commodity prices (copper) and build each piece that goes into the final assembly.

On a simplified level, these wires may as well be individual subassemblies. Each wire can differ in gauge, weight, color, stranding, shielding, cut length, etc. Each end of the wire may have different strip lengths, treatments, and terminations. This level of detail almost requires individual subassemblies. However, complex harnesses may have hundreds or thousands of individual wires. This makes it impractical to create and manage a subassembly for each individual wire, especially if those wires change often

They are looking for a simple method to provide visibility of the material used, steps required to complete production, and individual wire configurations.  So far, they have been unsuccessful at integrating this into their system.  Their current approach is to use the ERP to handle the raw material stream and attach, create, distribute, and process all harness instructions outside the system using Excel and other applications.

How can NE Company more completely integrate this into the system?  Is there any way for them to eliminate the external applications all together?  Can they at least reduce the external processing?  What type of controls can be built in to the system to reduce human error and increase efficiency?

*Name has been changed


MCSBusiness Case Solution


There are a few options any company can use to manage wires and wire harnesses.  The list below is ordered ...

Read the full Business Case Solution >>


MCSManEx Case Solution


ManEx has current and planned features to make wire harness processing as easy as possible.

Read the full ManEx Case Solution >>

IYOW In Your Own Words

Wire Harness Manufacturing 

"We have the same problem. All work instructions are created outside of ManEx and distributed along with kits. I think the module that allows you to attach work instructions in ManEx still need to be created externally then attached. If you would allow text to be entered directly into the routing steps without restriction, everything could be done within the system. The drawings would still have to be created in something like Auto Cad though.

-Larry, NH   

MYMMake Your Mark

Please share your challenges and issues. Give us a challenge and see if we are able to provide a workable solution. All cases are presented using North Eastern Company (NE Company) as the principle in the case.

To suggest a new topic please send us an email or click here to submit the topic through our website.

 
 

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