Factory Automation

SMKL

Guiding you to digital manufacturing success.
That is SMKL (Smart Manufacturing Kaizen Level).

SMKL is an evaluation index of the level of data utilization in factories. It can help management to make investment decisions by showing the purpose, impact and relationship of each investment step towards making your factory smarter.

SMKL evaluates the level of digital manufacturing by using two axis: one is maturity level and the other is management level.

Maturity Level;
The level of visibility

The level of data visibility is represented by the maturity level, shown on the vertical axis of the SMKL model. Level A is defined as “Data collection” ; Level B as “Visualization” ; Level C as “Analysis” ; and Level D as “Optimization”.　

Management Level;
The granularity of the items to be managed

The horizontal axis represents the granularity, or level of detail for the items to be managed. Level 1 is defined as the company’s “Worker”; Level 2 as “Workplace”; Level 3 as “Factory”; and Level 4 as “Whole supply chain”.

The value of SMKL

Start “smartification” from the most appropriate point according to the current level and goals of each factory
The modular approach lets you carry out “smartification” step by step
Calculating and measuring the ROI achieved at each step is essential for investment decisions
Optimization can occur at every level, all the way up to the entire factory and the whole supply chain, leading to significant business improvements (tackling a variety of management issues)

Example 1: Productivity improvement

Improving production efficiency, by minimizing variations in worker performance, through "visualizing" operations

Results

Overall production efficiency increased by 30%.

Training time for workers reduced by 65%
18% faster production switchover between models
Assembly time reduced by 12% on average

Level D

Optimize

Level C

Analyze

Level B

Visualize

Level A

Collect

Level 1

Worker

Level 2

Workplace

Level 3

Factory

Level 4

Supply Chain

“Maturity Model” is a known type of analysis, it also makes the reader think of higher management analysis so is the right way to describe this….because it is actually a maturity model!

Just to make continuous investment is probably a bad business decision but to make that investment sustainable means that it pays for its self and continues to drive value – simply investing continuously does not guarantee benefit – only cost

Issue

Low production efficiency and uncontrollable cost management

Work speed and errors vary depending on the worker
Cannot tell which worker is making a mistake and how often

Implementation

Introduce support tools for the assembly process to the workplace

Demonstrate the procedure
Collect and analyze data on working hours and mistakes

Improvements

Significant cost reductions by improving worker efficiency through minimizing operational mistakes

Increased workers’ productivity through faster processing with less assembly errors
Understand the work status of all workers, identify common mistakes which require process or design correction and who needs retraining
Reduce unnecessary actions and redundant checking

Based on this result, we will realize overall cost reduction by expanding the investment target to the entire factory.