Speeding up ramp-ups, pre-series and series production in electronics manufacturing

Upping their game

In electronics manufacturing, especially anything with a complex printed circuit board (PCB), the stakes are high and the margin for error is low. From design to production, operations need to be agile, efficient and error-free. This is why Watts Electronics turned to Siemens and its state-of-the-art manufacturing operations management (MOM) portfolio: to up their game across operations and manufacturing company wide.

A branch of Watts Water Technologies, a global leader in plumbing, heating and water quality solutions, Watts Electronics is a leading original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) electronics systems for both Watts Water Technologies as well as their OEM customers. Known for its advanced thermostats and internet of things (IoT) ecosystem solutions, Watts Electronics focuses on the latest innovative products and high-tech applications, including customized PCBs. In the era of smart products, Watts Electronics plays a critical strategic role for the group, creating and producing future-ready products for customers around the globe.

“Watts Electronics is a market leader in advanced HVAC systems handling the entire process from concept and PCBs to final packaging,” says Myriam Granger, operations director, Watts Electronics, Europe. “We have two factories, one in Rosières, France and one in Monastir, Tunisia. The Rosières plant focuses on research and development and prepping our electronic products, including all the required documentation and manufacturing processes. The Tunisian plant is focused on production in varying volumes. We are known to be very flexible when it comes to production volumes.”

A competitive and complex business

This is true for new products as well. The company dedicates 30 percent of its production capacity to new product lines annually.

“Today we are operating in an increasingly competitive environment, which requires us to reindustrialize and rethink both our processes and products,” says Granger. “It’s very important that we move toward standardization, simplification and optimization. We also need to be faster when introducing our new products.”

With competition from the Asia-Pacific pushing prices down and quality standards up, Watts Electronics knew they needed to up their game to keep up with their customer requests for faster product quotations, introductions and upgrades as well as more reactive and agile production capabilities. This meant better synchronization, visibility and traceability between the sites in France and Tunisia. It also meant replacing outdated spreadsheet-based processes and manual inputting and recopying for managing data.

Moving toward digitalization

The Watts Electronics plant in Tunisia employs about 280 people who specialize in manufacturing and assembling advanced electronic products. A streamlined but complex production operation, the focus is on flexibility and agility.

Watts Electronics has a diverse product mix, requiring middle-volume/high-mix production. Electronic products account for 50 percent and the other 50 percent includes final finishing and packaging. For middle-volume products, the Tunisian site produces series ranging from 30,000 to 50,000 units. The high-mix segment requires 80 series changes in surface mount technology (SMT) and 160 series changes per week for manual parts.

“Obviously, we wanted to standardize operating procedures at both sites to facilitate production and make it more fluid,” says Cédric Vauzelle, site director at the Monastir plant. “That’s why we thought a MOM solution would be the right tool. It would give us real-time visibility of what’s happening in our production facilities, optimize our ramp-ups and let us manage operations from Tunisia as well as from Rosières.”

Siemens steps into the picture

The management team looked at what was available on the market and immediately saw the potential of Siemens Opcenter™ Execution Electronics software, part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services. They were also impressed with the consulting capabilities of Siemens expert solution partner CDT, which could provide onsite support in France and Tunisia.

“Siemens solutions are proven in electronics,” says Vauzelle. “We felt as if we were talking to people who worked in the same field and that we could get a solution that met our needs, not a solution that we had to adapt to our needs. That was a big difference compared to what we saw with other solutions.”

CDT experts worked together with the Watts Electronics team to create a step-by-step digital transformation process at both sites. CDT guided the teams in software installation, adaptation and training.

The Siemens MOM solution in detail

They started in Rosières by implementing the BOM Connector to streamline the quote process, connecting the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to map customer BOM data. This gave them a chance to automate a large part of the quote process, including matching internal part numbers, calculating costs based on real-time sourcing and pricing. It also provided a solid foundation for future production planning and cost analysis. Additionally, using BOM Connector gave the team extra data automation and material traceability throughout the supply chain so they could increase prototyping and pre-series production speed.

When this first step was validated, they continued installing the Process Preparation tool onsite in France and Tunisia to standardize new product introduction (NPI) processes.

“The Process Preparation tool permitted us to speed up new product introduction – especially when it came to SMT,” says Vauzelle. “Our new product lines were much more efficient with less quality issues and defects.”

The team then integrated Opcenter APS and Opcenter SMT Scheduling for production scheduling for all the SMT lines and the entire factory. This gave the experts on the floor much more control of scheduling and priority modifications – even allowing changes in real time – which hadn’t been possible with the previous spreadsheet-based workflow.

“The Siemens MOM solutions help us be more agile and responsive when programming our machines as well as preparing manual tasks,” says Ahmed Saida, production and supply chain manager in Tunisia. “We can track the product start and end times, manage production times, monitor the pace and react quickly to problems or quality defects.

“Opcenter APS and Opcenter SMT Scheduling are real assets for planning our production. It helps us define when products will be ready and synchronize different production stages. We can quickly replan if needed to respond to our customers’ more urgent requests.”

With all three tiers of the Siemens MOM solutions products installed onsite (BOM Connector, Process Preparation and Opcenter), the team is starting to see the benefits.

“Our engineers in Rosières are using BOM Connector to prepare the quotations for new product introduction,” says Mourad Chatbouri, manufacturing execution system (MES)/MOM project manager, Watts Electronics. “It’s shrinking the time we need to prepare quotes. The Process Preparation tools used here in Monastir and in Rosières are great solutions to prepare required documentation and program our machines. We’ve started to work with the Opcenter Execution system – the big system. It will be a very important step for all our machine connectivity.”

“Our customers appreciate the improvement,” says Vauzelle. “It clearly accelerated our agility and production speed on the floor as well as the agility of the validation process between pre-series and series production.”

Taking one step at a time

The next step will be to use the Opcenter Intraplant Logistics (IPL) system to provide further visibility and control of the material flows across both sites. Watts Electronics will also deploy advanced reporting and analytics to visualize the entire supply chain, including traceability from electronic component procurement and production to final product delivery.

“We’re very happy with our choice to split our Siemens MOM project into phases to reduce overall risk and increase its long-term success,” says Vauzelle. “This also allowed the teams to get up to speed with the new tools at a reasonable pace and on a daily basis.”

“Thanks to our Siemens MOM tools, we have eliminated all the busy work that doesn’t add value,” says Granger. “This frees up time for more challenging and fulfilling tasks; like process or production analysis, which really uses the talents of our people and adds value to not only our company but their personal growth. This is very important.

“Our Siemens MOM solution certainly standardized all our operations and processes, but it also has aided us in preparing for the future in a much more efficient manner while preserving the quality of our products.”