Change Within EMS Companies’ Operations

Internal Specifications of a Smart Factory

To be competitive, an electronics manufacturing company must integrate automation processes within its smart factory. This integration requires radical changes, especially in terms of its operations. These changes can be considered to be a form of management—nowadays, people are not being managed, machines and networks are. The challenge of an electronic contract manufacturer or an Electronic Manufacturing Services company is to adapt traditional horizontal and vertical management methods to robots, software, and networks.

In an EMS company, the different services connected to the supply chain must communicate, since each step has an impact on the next, and consequently on the final production. From PCBA engineering, design, and manufacturing to new product introduction on the market, each step of production is validated by a control system. This system indicates that a task is complete and that the following system can now work to accomplish its assignment. For this, a vertical network must be set up. Smart factories take this aspect into account.

On an international level, process compliance must be very strict to ensure the quality of production. A horizontal network built for machine management must also be implemented. Managing quality and risk simultaneously is one of the major challenges in ensuring the efficiency of the manufacturing process. Thus, machine-to-machine communication must be managed very precisely.
Thanks to smart supply chain solutions, several electronic contract manufacturing companies provide intelligent supply chain management, permitting the “smart” automation of processes. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are at the source of such smart supply chain solutions.