The environment and “on-shoring” activities produce a positive impact on the assembly market

Citation

Bloss, R. (2012), "The environment and “on-shoring” activities produce a positive impact on the assembly market", Assembly Automation, Vol. 32 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/aa.2012.03332daa.004

The environment and “on-shoring” activities produce a positive impact on the assembly market

Article Type: News From: Assembly Automation, Volume 32, Issue 4

Concerns about the environment and the recent surge in companies moving to “on-shore” production are having positive effects on the assembly systems business. The environment issues are driving the introduction of new products that cause less impact on the environment both during production and in their use by the consumer. These new products create assembly issues as cost effective manufacture is addressed. “On-shoring” is also driving manufacturers to find ways to reduce cost while improving quality. Here, are a couple of examples of these impacts.

Environmental factors

At the recent CIRP Conference on Assembly Systems and Technology (see conference review elsewhere in this issue) a number of presentations addressed automation developments for production of high tech Lithium-Ion batteries for electric cars.

Auto manufacturers are reaching out to university research institutes to develop find automation techniques to build such devices in a cost effective manner that also provides the necessary very high quality control. Some of the battery issues include bonding dissimilar materials and carefully handling flexible fiber materials.

Another electric car assembly issue being addressed by automation is installation of the much more extensive wiring required by electric or hybrid vehicles. Automation, with the help of human/robotic collaboration is being applied to assembling harnesses in a more cost effective manner. Other automation, with careful planning, is installing the harness in vehicles in a very efficient manner.

“On-shoring”

For decades manufacturers have been looking to move product to low labor cost countries, “off shoring”, to reduce product cost. Recently, these same companies have started addressing ways to move production back home and still enjoy cost savings. They are looking at product redesign to reduce number of components, fastening methods and assembly planning and automation to reduce cost of manufacture and improve quality at the same time.

A major example of this trend is the one billion dollar (USD) investment that General Electric has made as their five year plan to revitalize their home appliance manufacturing division with headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky.

GE applied 38 million USD to building a water heater plant to produce a newly engineered energy efficient design called the GeoSpring hybrid water heater. The new design is more efficient than previous models and designed for lower cost production. The GeoSpring is the most energy efficient available today. Engineers applied the latest in technology to reduce cost. They applied an “Erector Set” approach to simplify the assembly process and make it more efficient. End result is the GeoSpring water heater is 300-400 dollars (USD) less expensive than the model it replaces.

For their refrigerator assembly line, GE invested 250 million (USD), to produce a new line of models with a bottom freezer and French doors above (two doors). As part of the design improvement process, the new models have many snap-fits that replace threaded fasteners in previous models. They designed the unit with about 100 fewer parts than the previous model while at the same time incorporating many added features. The electrical wiring was reduced by about 50 percent versus the previous model.

The length of the refrigerator assembly line for the new model is about half as long as the production line for the previous model. One production improvement feature is dropping cardboard shipping cartons down from above rather than having workers throw the boxes over the refrigerators. Another assembly line feature is concurrent operations rather than consecutive operations.

As another part of the GE one billion dollar effort, two additional appliance manufacturing plants and products are now under the same type of enhancement process and will be coming on line in the future.

Richard BlossAssociate Editor