Elevating your equipment manufacturing

How partnering with the right component supplier can cut manufacturing time and cost for OEMs

This article describes the elements that a component supplier must have to become a true manufacturing partner for OEMs.

NB. All the products pictured in this article are available for ordering from Farnell.

Manufacturing washing machines, refrigerators, CNC equipment or other electromechanical products is a complex process that demands a huge range of parts, comprising electronics devices like semiconductors plus electromechanical components, such as switches and relays.

Establishing a single source for all these components offers obvious cost and time advantages to an OEM, providing all the products are competitively priced and always available on demand. This objective calls for a good supplier.

However, a truly excellent supplier can do so much better than this in three specific ways:

Firstly, they should help their OEM partners to achieve their one-stop-shopping objectives by supplying off-board and electromechanical components such as switches, pushbuttons, relays, circuit breakers and HMI components, as well as semiconductors, passive components, and other on-board parts.

Secondly, their portfolio should be sufficiently wide and deep to accommodate not only the OEM’s requirements for the products they are making but also for the assembly line they build to manufacture these products.

Finally, they should offer full product life cycle support right from the original prototypes through volume production to after sales maintenance, along with products to keep the assembly line up and running efficiently and safely. They must accommodate the OEM’s demand profile throughout the life cycle, meeting both low-volume and high-volume requirements equally reliably.

The article below shows exactly how a component supplier can become a manufacturing partner by considering the life cycle of a new smart washing machine – one that has built-in WiFi and can be controlled from an app in the user’s smartphone and synchronised with a dryer.

Figure 1: Washing machine – an appliance containing large numbers of electronic and electromechanical devices

Prototyping

This often starts with designing the controller printed circuit board (PCB), which manages the machine’s sensors and actuators to fulfil a cleaning cycle according to the program selected. It also handles communication with external devices. This involves buying in low volumes of the selected microcontroller (such as the Infineon PSoC 6 family), along with capacitors, resistors, inductors, DC-DC converters, transformers, diodes, switching devices, isolation, interfacing circuits and on-board connectors.

Along with PCB components, the designer will also require test, measurement, and development equipment such as oscilloscopes, multimeters, development kits and language compilers.

Meanwhile, the electronic designer’s colleagues working on other parts of the machine will need electromechanical components, including power supplies, relays, rotary switches, off board connectors, buttons, and control knobs, displays and HMI subassemblies, cables and cable assemblies, fuses, transformers, electrolytic capacitors, potentiometers, sensors, and motor controllers.

Farnell offers comprehensive product ranges across both areas and can supply competitively-priced parts in the low quantities needed for prototyping.

Figure 2: From microcontroller to power relay

Setting up the assembly line

While prototyping is ongoing, preparations must also be made to productionise the machine – and one of the first steps would be to set up the assembly line on which the machines will be produced.

This calls for a large variety of industrial products, including valves and pneumatic equipment, sensors, temperature and process controllers, signal lights, wires and cables, safety switches and relays, industrial connectors, circuit breakers, motors, HMIs and instrumentation, safety light curtains and wireless connectivity along the line.

Also needed are control panels, containing power distribution equipment, including power supplies, PLCs, relays, circuit breakers, motor controllers and HMIs, wires and cables, trunking, sensors, and various switches – rocker, selector, toggle, pushbutton and Estop. All these components must be housed within a control panel enclosure, typically with an IP ingress protection rating.

Figure 3: Process controller

Compared with the supplies required for products being manufactured in volume, the quantity of components required for building assembly lines is relatively low. Nevertheless, Farnell can fulfil the wide range of low volume parts needed at competitive pricing and with timely delivery.

Producing the washing machine in volume

To enable volume production of the washing machine, delivery schedules for all the electronic, industrial, and electromechanical components in the numbers required must be established. Component pricing must also be confirmed as this becomes critical once high volumes are involved.

Productionising the machine may also call for custom design of metal or plastic enclosures to contain the controller board and other internal subassemblies, as well as custom cable assemblies.

Farnell offers competitive pricing along with reliable delivery schedules to accommodate the high-volume electronic and electromechanical component requirements.

We also offer an in-house cable assembly design and manufacturing facility, as well as providing custom metal and plastic enclosure solutions as an externally sourced service.

Figure 4: Farnell’s enclosure customisation service

Product maintenance and repair support

After production is established, with washing machines being distributed to end customers, some machines, over time, will inevitably be returned for repair. The OEM must cater to this by setting up a repair facility to process the returns in a cost-effective and timely fashion.

Farnell can help by offering all necessary components in low volumes or even singly, along with the oscilloscopes, multimeters, clamp meters, infrared cameras, repair tools, soldering irons & solder, lubricant and freeze sprays, adhesives & adhesive tapes, sealants, and storage trays and work benches needed by repair technicians.

Figure 5: Workbench setup

Keeping the assembly line running

The OEM will need maintenance and repair capabilities to avoid costly stoppages on the assembly line as well as provide a washing machine repair facility.

Farnell supports predictive maintenance with data logging equipment such as vibration meters; these can be used to detect early problems in assembly line motors before they develop into failures and line stoppages. We also provide bench power supplies, power & appliance testers, continuity testers, signal generators and counters, test leads and probes, label printer kits & labels, earth & ground resistance testers, thermal imaging cameras, and many other maintenance accessories.

Health & safety and PPE

Farnell offers products to provide a safe and efficient environment for assembly line operatives. These include first aid kits, safety signs and labels including COVID handwashing instructions in multiple languages.

Personal protective equipment (PPE) is available for eye, ear, and head protection, as well as disposable overalls offering complete, head-to-toe protection.

Antistatic protection, including antistatic wrist straps and testers, is also available.

Figure 6: Disposable overalls with limited hazardous splash protection

Other applications

This article has been based on washing machine production, because washing machines are good examples of products that require not only cutting-edge electronics, but also rugged off-board industrial components. However, this ‘ultra-wide’ one-stop approach can be used for most industries manufacturing products of any type with electrical and electronic components.

Electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers are another prime example. Although their assembly lines are heavily populated with robot arms, they also need many other components – conveyor belt control, for example - as described above. Meanwhile, EVs themselves have a very high demand for electronic and electrical components for the motive power train as well as infotainment systems and other control equipment.

Music systems are a very different application, yet they still need the same spectrum of component types. We offer speaker, video, audio, USB and other cable assemblies, as well as speakers and an in-depth selection of audio knobs that offer very low noise performance with very precise volume control.

Other applications range from medical equipment such as ECG machines, to domestic, commercial, and industrial premise equipment like boilers and air conditioning systems.

Conclusion

In this article we have seen how Farnell supports the OEM on their journey from initial prototyping through to full volume production, covering the maintenance activities for both the deliverable products and the assembly line producing them, and the efficiency and safety of the operatives running the assembly line. Farnell accommodates both low volume and high-volume deliveries as and when they are needed.

Farnell is not just a component supplier, but a service provider and manufacturing partner for OEMs. Our contribution helps to keep OEMs up and running 24/7, while maximising energy efficiency and achieving industry leadership with Industry 4.0 technology and beyond.