EMANS - Assembly Management System
A large number of manufacturing industries
employ manual assembly as the preferred
way of discrete production especially
if the product features high complexity,
variability and sophistication. The EMANS
combines capabilities of human operators
with instrumentation in order to achieve
maximum quality, flexibility and cost efficiency.
Operations carried out by human operators
allow high flexibility, precision and reliability.
Information systems supporting the execution
of this type of production need to address the
following main areas:
I. Enforcement of workflows.
Operators
need to carry out the operations as required,
in correct order and required quality. On
one hand, this requires proper guidance
of the operator for each step. On the
other hand, the critical operations are to
be independently checked by appropriate
mechanisms and in many cases the tasks
have to be archived for later audit.
II. Management of human resources.
Starting from planning the shifts so that all
scheduling constraints are observed, through
the records of activities to the reporting of
performance, quality and other parameters.
III. Management of material supply.
Orders
must ensure that the correct workflows are
initiated in the correct order and time and
exceptions in the execution are resolved in a
timely fashion.
IV. Interconnectivity.
Other enterprise or
specific applications must communicate in
order that appropriate data are provided to
other parts of the company.
Product Features
Anasoft’s EMANS effectively addresses assembly
management. It is built upon a on temporary application
and integration platform AMUN, which ensures the
following conceptual advantages:
- Highly ergonomic user interfaces customized for
different roles. The system has typically several very
heterogeneous user groups – operators, administrators,
supervisors, top managers – with different needs not only
in terms of functionality, but also in the way of interaction
with the system.
-
Openness for integration and communication. Heterogeneity of software applications is typical for
manufacturing - instrumentation with embedded
computers, communication controllers and enterprise
applications. One of EMANS strengths is ability to interface
with very different systems using their native standards.
-
Flexibility supporting wide range of processes. The overall philosophy of the system results in minimum
of “hard-coded” functions. Workflow centric approach
allows implementing almost any deterministic process
in an efficient way. Flexibility of implementation is further
supported by powerful, highly customizable reporting
functions.
- Scalability. The system usage can vary from full scale
usage, applied to the complex workflows spanned across
many workplaces, operations and operators. Even multiple
plants can be managed with remote administration
and consolidation of data. However, we are also open
to implementation in much smaller scale, e.g. several
selected workplaces or operations with strong need for
auditing.
-
Security ensured on several functional levels. The
access to the system functions is fully role-based. All data
is appropriately protected against loss or unauthorized
usage.
Workflows
The corner stone of the system are Workflows. They describe the processes
to be carried out – typically the assembly of a defined product. Each workflow
can comprise any number of process steps – logical blocks of simple actions
chained using branching, conditions and loops.
-
Prepare – the system checks to ensure that all prerequisites of the given
process steps are fulfilled – previous steps are finished successfully, all
materials are prepared, required instruments are available etc.
-
Do – defined actions are carried out by the operator. Operators are guided
visually on the screen, the system can control given tools – enable their use
or lock them, collect the information about the operations.
-
Check – by the highly critical operations, it is often efficient to introduce an
independent system for checking of the correctness of result. The EMANS
will activate appropriate camera systems or other sensors verifying the
required state of the product and direct the process flow according to the
result.
-
Document – all operations, including the raw data from the sensors are
archived in the defined data structures for later use..
All workflows are created, edited and managed in the Workflow Management
module. They are displayed and edited in a user friendly visual way with
possibility to define and reuse any portions of the processes, which helps to
manage sub-assemblies of modular Bills of Materials.
Once designed, the workflows are executed by Process Management Module.
All running processes are independent and they can be monitored in real-time
on individual level.
Production Flow Management
The Production Flow Management module controls the
flow of orders and manages relations between orders and
workflows. In the Just-in-time production it provides the
monitoring of the received orders and their realization status,
including alarm for defined exceptions from the given rules.
The system supports printed orders with barcodes or other
ways of identification at each workplace, as well as other
types of labels for the internal or customer use.
Operators Management
This part of the system comprises two areas of functionality:
- Definition of working teams, scheduling of shifts, reporting
on the workloads by different working units
- Detailed log of the individual actions realized by each
operator, calculations of the effectiveness and efficiency
indicators by operators, shifts or other hierarchy units.
Reporting
Based on the data available in the system, it is possible to
create custom reports for the needs of different levels and
lines of management. Reports can be static or interactive,
created on-demand, in given time periods or when the
defined conditions are met (e.g. status of orders).
Instrumentation Interfaces
For the direct incorporation of the sensors
and controls into the processes, the system
provides interfaces to the standard and custom
instrumentation interfaces. The set of the
standards and protocols grows rapidly and we
are ready to implement new ones according to
the specific needs for any given process.
External Systems
Interfaces
In order to provide smooth flow of data
across the enterprise, the system provides
mechanisms for interconnection with other
types of applications and systems. Additionally
to the most common types and brands, we can
interface legacy applications via web services,
function calls or other communication standards.
If you are interested in EMANS, please contact our sales department at sales@anasoft.com
