Siemens Manufacturing Provides High-Performance Mobile Data Capture for Shop Floor Operations

Challenge

For manufacturing companies, it is vital to proactively define and enforce quality and efficiency throughout the manufacturing process. For those who are regulated, there is the added obligation to have a complete and immutable audit trail of the history of units and devices that have been built. Manufacturers need a system that can define, monitor and enforce highly complex manufacturing workflows.

The Siemens Manufacturing Execution System (MES) does exactly this. It provides end-to-end visibility of production data across multiple sites or plants in a full supply chain. It empowers leaders to make rapid, informed decisions in fast-moving operating environments. Siemens Operations Execution Core (formerly Camstar), serves three specific industries: medical devices, semiconductors, and electronics. Customers typically are manufacturers assembling complex devices, who need to track every step of the build process.

On the shop floor, assembly operators are building devices, for example, medical defibrillators. Operators need to identify and verify the correct component at every step. Traditionally they would have to key in the unit identification number manually, which was extremely time-consuming and prone to error.

You can’t have traceability if you have inaccurate data. Dynamsoft is key to ensuring reliability and integrity of data captured within our MES.

– Silvio Saouaf, Product Director, Siemens PLM

Mobile Scanning on the Shop Floor

Barcode scanning quickly became an absolute necessity for the assembly process. Siemens developed a browser-based scanning application, which would typically be used with a desktop or laptop and a plug-in USB scanner. This transformed the process. For instance, an operator building a defibrillator would start with a chassis and then insert a motherboard, scanning the barcode serial number to validate against the bill of materials and build instructions. This is repeated for every single component that is added during the build process. The barcode data is passed to the MES for validation and the operator will be flagged if they add an incorrect or expired component or use a wrongly calibrated tool.

Many Siemens MES customers wanted to migrate to mobile devices to give operators a smaller footprint at their workstations and let them move around more freely. Mobile devices are also less susceptible to dust which affects desktop fans and less costly to replace. So, Siemens needed to add support for barcode scanning from mobile devices to their browser-based app.

Dynamsoft has been an essential part of our mobile strategy. It’s had a strong impact on adoption with our customers who need mobile scanning.

– Silvio Saouaf, Product Director, Siemens PLM

Siemens wanted a mature barcode scanning solution with support for a wide range of barcodes and high performance under demanding factory floor conditions. In manufacturing, it is absolutely critical that data capture is done in a sub-second time. Shop floor lighting may be low-level or yellowish and barcode labels are often dirty, damaged, or tricky to access. It is vital that data is captured and populated in the browser in a split second time.

Siemens tested the free trial version of Dynamsoft and very quickly proved that it could be easily integrated into their app and would perform consistently well in these exacting conditions.

The final requirement was making licensing seamless for their customers. Barcode scanning is embedded in the Siemens MES solution, so it was important to make licensing friction-free for their customers. Siemens’ customers are now able to simply select the scanning option and start using it without any software or third-party licensing setup.

Dynamsoft is key to ensuring integrity of data within our system for traceability within the manufacturing process.

– Silvio Saouaf, Product Director, Siemens PLM

Achieving Complete Traceability

Impact

After verifying speed, accuracy, and ease of integration with the trial version, Siemens was able to integrate the SDK and roll out the mobile version within just a few months. So far, close to 50% of Siemens’ MES customers are using mobile barcode scanning, and that is expected to grow with the increasing adoption of mobile devices on the shop floor. Dynamsoft has been an essential part of Siemens’ mobile strategy for the Opcenter Execution Center Suite. It has been key to ensuring Siemens’ customers have full traceability within the manufacturing process.

Using Dynamsoft helps ensure reliability and accuracy of data capture by shop floor operators.

– Silvio Saouaf, Product Director, Siemens PLM