How can ESOP enhance the “smart manufacturing” process?
ESOP can reduce the production of defective products and prevent them from flowing to the next station.
SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) on the production line has always been a highly discussed topic. In the production process, operators follow the instructions in SOPs compiled by production technicians to guide their production behavior. When a product has a complaint or is defective, the relevant SOP is reviewed. The accuracy of SOPs is closely related to the production line’s output and yield. Lean production tells us that continuous improvement leads to perfection, which is a goal that the manufacturing industry continually pursues. However, traditional SOPs are recorded in production instructions and only teach production personnel to produce, so it is not known whether they are producing according to SOPs. With the recent trend of smart manufacturing integration, more and more companies are digitizing their SOPs, known as “ESOP (Electronic Standard Operating Procedures).”
So what is ESOP? As the name suggests, it is a digital version of SOPs, displayed on a screen for operators to follow. Traditional SOPs are unidirectional, and the operator’s correctness cannot be confirmed. ESOPs make SOP operations dynamic, and the interactive production model can monitor production behavior at any time, collect data generated by production behavior in real-time, and synchronize it with the database.
The merits of ESOP are as follows:
- Interactive production behavior: ESOP integrates human-machine interfaces, combines equipment and people to fully integrate production behavior, and synchronizes interactive production behavior during production operations, ensuring that production data meets the upper and lower limits of specifications.
- Correct and consistent production operations: Regardless of the operator’s skill level, as long as they follow the sequence of ESOP, they can produce consistently high-quality products.
- Real-time disclosure of production progress: Real-time collection of production progress information, and interaction with the MES (Manufacturing Execution System) system, returning real-time progress.
- Activating the MES (Manufacturing Execution System) system: ESOP allows the MES system to dynamically integrate SOP operations and interactive production models, combining required equipment for production, and further achieving a smart manufacturing production model.
Digital integration architecture of ESOP is as follows:
Through the interaction of documents and MES (Manufacturing Execution System), the process document data including the routing data, workstation data, and so on are planned in the MES system. Then, the production operations are implemented through various workstations, integrating relevant equipment data in real-time, synchronizing production behavior, and providing real-time feedback to the MES system on production progress and collected equipment data. In ESOP operations, when the collected data exceeds the upper and lower process control limits, the production status is immediately fed back to avoid the flow of defective products to the next workstation, ensuring that every workstation produces only qualified products.
How to build an intelligent production model through ESOP?
The following are the basic tasks that need to be completed first.
- Break down the SOP operation: integrate the SOP operation with equipment through digital means, not just on paper.
- Subdivide the production operation sequence.
- Plan the production model and create an interactive production model.
In summary, ESOP is a complete and mature intelligent production manufacturing model. By using the ESOP production model, productivity can be improved, output increased, production yield raised, and defective products reduced. Each product goes through multiple production processes, with transparent production information, real-time progress, and data-driven decision-making to achieve “intelligent manufacturing” and meet the needs of every customer.