8D Problem Solving Methodology: Continuous Improvement in Automation Organization

The Eight Disciplines (8D) is a problem-solving technique methodology to identify the root cause of a problem, devise a short-term fix and implement a long-term solution to prevent recurring problems. 8D is a remarkable first step to enhancing Quality and Reliability when the product is defective or not satisfying the customer. The study was conducted in a manufacturing company producing and assembly wire harness. The data was collected for a period of Three months from July 2020 to September 2020, to identify defective percentage of wire harness and they were found to be high at the average rate of 51.39%. In this work the objective was set to investigates quality issues and provides a solution to reduce the rejection of wiring harness mainly in crimping process. In order to achieve this, 8D problem solving technique was used to analyze and solve the problem. Then, Pareto analysis was done to identify vital causes contributing defectives. From the Pareto analysis, it was found that functioning contact crimp condition with percentage 66.67% is the major cause for rejection. Further brainstorming sessions was held to identify the root causes. After the brainstorming session, cause and effect diagram was constructed and it was found to be variation in the that the connector near cable chain is moving area. Thus, the wire assembly with too high radius may caused external force to the wires when machine running with speed and the end of wire may break off when the wire stretched. The suggestions to reduce the rejection percentage were to install mounting bracket prevent wires shaking when machine running and use proper crimp tools. After implementing the suggestion, the total rejection for wire harness particularly contact crimp condition was reduced to 0.93% in December 2020, from average rejection of 66.67%. (3 months data).

Ontology-Based Analysis of Manufacturing Processes: Lessons Learned from the Case Study of Wire Harness Production

Effective information management is critical for the development of manufacturing processes. This paper aims to provide an overview of ontologies that can be utilized in building Industry 4.0 applications. The main contributions of the work are that it highlights ontologies that are suitable for manufacturing management and recommends the multilayer-network-based interpretation and analysis of ontology-based databases. This article not only serves as a reference for engineers and researchers on ontologies but also presents a reproducible industrial case study that describes the ontology-based model of a wire harness assembly manufacturing process.

Mechatronic Re-Design of a Manual Assembly Workstation into a Collaborative One for Wire Harness Assemblies

Nowadays, the wire harness assembly process is still manually performed due to the process complexity and product variability (e.g., wires of different kind, size and length). The Wire cobots project, in which this work was conceived, aims at improving the current state-of-art assembly process by introducing in it collaborative robotics. A shared workstation exploiting human abilities and machine strengths was developed to assembly automotive wire harness by means of insulated tape for a real industrial case. In the new workstation, the human deals with the complex task of wire handling, while the robot performs the repetitive and strenuous taping operations. Such a task allocation together with the workstation redesign allow for an improvement of the operator’s well-being in terms of postural conditions and for an increase of the production efficiency. In this paper, the mechanical and mechatronic design, as well as the realization and validation of this new collaborative workstation are presented and discussed.