Sony’s woes point up need for MES and traceability in complex manufacturing

Sony’s problem relates to a defect with image sensors, and the fact that the company hasn’t revealed how many cameras are affected is worrying. It’s hardly great for the brand, particularly in the wake of Sony’s earlier global recall of rechargeable batteries that risked causing laptops to burst into flames. PLM (product lifecycle management) software vendor turned MES (manufacturing execution system) developer UGS is one making the point that the potential for flaws is ever present in complex manufacturing, and that systems should be in place everywhere to record detailed materials and production line history and so limit recall issues. Says UGS production management group sales manger Mike Croot: “If manufacturers batch traced things – where they came from, which suppliers, which serial numbers – companies like Sony would be able to identify the problem cameras and just recall them.” He’s not suggesting that Sony doesn’t have such systems: we simply don’t know. But he does insist that manufacturers need to take heed and make changes to their working practices and their shop floor technology. “They don’t necessarily need to go as far as full scale MES, although if they want to enforce full route management in a complex production plant they will need that,” he says. “If they just need traceability, then for a single production line we’re talking about less that £50,000. For a full MES it’s at least £150,000 but they need to set that against the financial cost and damage to reputation, particularly in competitive markets. At the very least it’s an insurance policy.” He also makes the point that good track and trace systems aren’t just about minimising recall issues: they’re about ensuring that nothing goes wrong in the first place – and that if it does, it detected and rectified before leaving site. “I’m frustrated that everybody is talking about lean, Six Sigma and driving down cost and risk, but they still see MES as ‘a nice have’. I was with an automotive Tier One glass maker, for example, being driven to provide the right glass for the right line in the right order at the OEM. “They have FactoryLink [supervisory data collection] and a camera infrastructure, but the OEM is driving them to find out where everything is coming from… Shouldn’t the OEM be doing the same thing – building a ‘birth certificate’ that tracks where all materials, components and assemblies have come from? They should be implementing this stuff themselves.”