Improvement of automation processes along the Supply Chain: Application of Industry 4.0 concepts in managing incoming components, assembling them into a final product and performance testing

In recent years, companies have been paying attention to Industry 4.0, the fourth industrial revolution. The application of the main features of Industry 4.0, outlined in this thesis, makes companies more competitive and technologically advanced. In particular, standardization, digitalization, and automatization of processes, allow companies to be more flexible and able to cope with challenges like mass customization, higher productivity, and better quality. In order to provide practical examples of what has been learned from the state of the art of Industry 4.0, an analysis of the as-is of the Company is presented: some of the ongoing projects are briefly described. According to the concept of continuous improvement, the Company is still developing more and more projects with the aim of elaborating its processes in compliance with the characteristics of Industry 4.0. Traceability and integration of the processes are further key features of Industry 4.0 explained in this thesis. An analysis of a Company's case has been conducted based on these concepts. The manufacturing of lighting products, meaning automotive devices that mount LEDs, has arisen different issues, mainly correlated to the “binning” of LEDs: the development of proper traceability and management of this sort of data from the beginning of the supply chain, intended as the incoming of components in the warehouse, became necessary in order to assure better quality of the final product and a more efficient production, and logistical, process. In this regard, the project Smart Incoming has been closely monitored from the start. After looking for the weak points and defects of the current incoming process, the characteristics of the upcoming one have been established considering smart solutions involving digitalization, automation and standardization concepts. Significant improvements of the overall process can be, therefore, achieved. In particular, the project utilizes OCR technology to automate the reading of the information written on the labels of the incoming components and a full cloud-based infrastructure to store and elaborate them. Since the development of the project required some prior data analysis, different performance metrics are examined to properly decide on the project solution. The elaboration time and the confidence in the reading, for instance, are significant aspects to investigate. Another critical issue brought up by the manufacturing of lighting products can be found in the need of standardization and optimization of the assembly and testing phase along the production line. The current state of the SMT, surface-mounted technologies, lines where PCBs of lighting products are manufactured, is studied, with a focus on the critical points. A more in-depth analysis is conducted on the testing part, located at the end of the line: the purpose is to understand and compare the features of a proposed LED tester with respect to the actual one. Finally, the goal is to find possible solutions that can improve the characteristics of the line while considering higher levels of automation and better quality.