The year 2020 will witness a number of changes at Gemini Tec Ltd, all formulated around increasing build capacity at our UK facility to support our existing customers and our growing customer base. The first investment of 2020 comprises of more Mycronic Agilis smart feeders and smart magazines for our surface mount department.
Agilis Smart Feeders at Gemini Tec Ltd
Having a large inventory of feeders and magazines on hand ensures that every order we produce can be ‘set up’ offline in preparation for a product changeover. In the world of ‘high mix’ surface mount PCB assembly, its essential we can enact fast product changeovers, as we build a large variety of customer orders during our production shifts. And with product changeover times fully optimised, our engineers can commence the SMT assembly within minutes of the changeover being completed, gaining valuable efficiency in production times.
This latest investment of £150K adds more Mycronic Agilis smart feeders to our extensive feeder inventory. The common approach strategy we have adopted for our SMT placement capability allows us to transfer products from NPI to volume, without the need to re-engineer or re-validate additional processes across our fleet of seven Mycronic placement machines.
Smart feeders & digital integration:
When components arrive from our supply chain, we automatically bar-code each and every reel, stick and tube, so that materials can be digitally assigned to feeders and magazines during the ‘loading phase’ of production. Site wide visibility is gained through scanning the associated bar-codes at various locations around our facility.
When the materials are presented to any of our Mycronic surface mount machines, we can firstly validate the correct component has arrived, based on our customers BOM. We can then begin to track and control various data, such as; the electrical testing of components, issued stock batches, quantity consumed, quantity faulty and we can even manage the exposure and baking times of all MSL components.
During the ‘unloading phase’ of production, all components can be digitally assigned to new products or returned to a new stores location, passing all the relevant handling data to our ERP system ahead of the next build. Digital integration increases valuable up time and efficiency and removes the risk of using the wrong component within the build process.
