Ford’s Move from High-Volume to Digital Manufacturing

The automotive industry is widely recognized as a leader in the adoption of automation technologies. Of course, much of this recognition has been tied to the industry’s heavy use of robotics since the 1980s. But the use of advanced automation in the automotive industry goes much deeper than that and Ford is a prime example of an early mover in this area.

Up to the 1990s, Ford Motor Co. was principally focused on high-volume manufacturing, said Mike Bastian, digital systems integration manager in Ford’s Global Powertrain Group. During a visit to the company’s Livonia, Mich., transmission manufacturing plant, arranged by Siemens, Bastian described operations in the Powertrain Group in the 1990s as a high-volume manufacturing operation revolving around zone control—with huge control panels used to control large sections of the production lines. In the mid 1990s, however, this began to change with the introduction of the Ford Production System, in which all large manufacturing engineering programs in the Powertrain Group were centralized with an eye toward greater standardization. In 2000, Ford had adopted its Flexible Manufacturing System, a key component of which involved the application of condition monitoring to the Powertrain Group’s machining systems.

阅读一篇涵盖福特动力总成集团将其工厂地板系统的工作介绍的文章。

With these advances in place by 2005, the Powertrain Group officially moved from high-volume manufacturing to medium-volume line manufacturing to allow for more flexibility enabled by the use of digital tools and parallel path CNC machining systems, said Bastian. This instigated a push for the adoption of global control standards across the Powertrain Group in 2008. Under this initiative, the group focused on the global deployment of flexible systems and the standardization of factory information systems around the use of distributed control and machine condition monitoring.

The digital path
As Bastian sees it, the adoption of global control standards was key to putting the Powertrain Group on the digital manufacturing journey from that point forward. Implementation of these new standards took place between 2008 and 2012 and targeted three areas: hardware, software and networks.

By locking down the hardware standards around the use of IP65 programmable logic controllers (PLCs), integrated safety and conventional CNC machines with a product lifecycle roadmap and obsolescence management program for all, Bastian said the group could better manage the hardware with common programming software and commission the machines virtually using simulation.

The company’s software standard became the Ford Automation Software Template (FAST), which uses standardized function block programming and human-machine interface (HMI) displays. FAST is “key to our part tracking and tracing, process configuration, RFID use, throughput, machine monitoring and quality configurations,” Bastian said.

He added that Ford has a patent on the condition monitoring process it uses on some 4,000 CNCs around the world.

巴斯蒂安（Bastian）承认，一开始很难标准化，因为植物中的人们喜欢他们喜欢的东西。他补充说：“但是，经理们了解标准化的重要性是不可能的。”

A critical aspect of FAST is the software’s Process Configuration Tool. This tool allows for centralized access to every assembly station as well as the recipe being used to assemble parts. With this level of access, changes to processes, parts and recipes can be made centrally and distributed to every station in the plant.

这有助于福特动力总成小组实现其在全球范围内将HMI的目标相同的目标，以便劳动力可以根据需要移动，而无需在不同的HMI显示屏上重新训练。HMI屏幕显示零件各个方面的确定到构建状态，验证是否可以在当时在该电台组装的零件上使用任何用于组装的组件。

Dashboards placed throughout the plant show the serial number of the part being worked on, what station it is at and the status of the stations—for example, blocked, cycling, waiting starved. These dashboards can be accessed remotely by authorized personnel.

“The software is where the secret sauce is,” said Bastian. “With FAST, it’s easy to test, replicate and scale our processes.”

Part tracking
Another key software aspect of the Powertrain Group’s digital strategy is its Global Part Tracking System (GPTS). This virtual RF system tracks parts throughout the plant—all of which are marked with a 2D matrix code. A camera in each cell records the part ID to track the part throughout the system across every gantry and work cell, uploading its status at each stop to the GPTS. Even in the entirely automated cells, robots position parts in front of the camera to mark their presence in the cell before work begins.

The GPTS has its own recipe manager that correlates with the data in FAST. With this information tied together with real-time status updates from the cameras, users can see what recipe and what machine each part went through and where it’s currently at in the system. In addition, if something is wrong with a part and it is rejected, the cameras capture this data at the point of rejection to ensure that part does not make its way back into system.

在整个Livonia工厂中，通过使用近400台摄像机来跟踪1,100多个功能。

With the hardware and software standards locked down, the Powertrain settled on Profinet as the group’s networking standard. Under this standard, all plant floor devices—from robots to printers and scanners—are linked via Ethernet on the controls production network. Above that, the manufacturing production network houses the servers that link the operations data with the corporate IT network.

看着这三个segments-hardware, software and networks—as a whole, the Powertrain Group’s digital manufacturing strategy is based on digital design, digital tools and the digital factory using the digital twin, said Bastian, who added, "Our strategy is unique in how we connect controls with our production strategy.”

在这个数字指导下，利沃尼亚工厂已经产生了超过100万种传输，并且能够构建多达19种不同的传输模型。

Digital engineering
福特动力总成集团的制造工程经理乔恩·古斯克（Jon Guske）更深入地研究了该小组的数字策略如何在工程和生产的不同领域中发挥作用。

“We use digital engineering tools across our more than 40 active powertrain programs, from 3D designs to create and validate parts to supporting program objectives such as safety and quality," ,” Guske said.

The Powertrain Group uses 3D technologies for process simulation to assess clearances, ergonomics, tooling use and cycle times before putting anything into production. Guske added that the group uses in-plant 3D scanning—digital scans of all the group’s facilities—so they can spotlight areas for improvement. These scans can also be used in digital reverse engineering to create 3D models of the plants.

The group is bringing these plant scans into virtual reality to recreate assembly sequences and assess location of dunnage. “With this technology, we can walk through any changes we design before we implement them,” Guske said.

Other digital engineering technologies used by the group include computer-aided process planning to develop process cycle charts and generate CNC part programs with optimized tool paths, and computer--aided engineering to create accurate predictions of machined component quality—an integral component to design for manufacturability. “Complex, decoupled models are used to identify and understand system interactions,” said Guske. “The simulations use resonant frequencies of the part, tool, and fixture—along with system cutting dynamics—to produce areas of stability. We also model the casting process to analyze material flow, solidification and residual stress.”

Guske补充说，3D打印用于原型铸造核心和快速设计零件。他说：“我们使用它来验证和验证固定装置，所有这些都可以快速验证设计以减少时间和成本。”

Another digital engineering tool used by the group is offline robotic programming, which Guske said allows the group to optimize robotic processes before building parts and to reduce commissioning time at runoff and installation.

总的来说，这些工具使动力总成集团能够隔离离散事件吞吐量，以符合控制复杂制造系统行为的设备之间的互动。Guske说：“这使我们能够最大化系统容量，将约束放置在所需位置，并测试是否对流程和设备进行了变化。”