Industrial Andons, LLC

Fabtech is just a few weeks away! Come see us at booth W4710. This is the first time for Fabtech in Orlando so enjoy the sun and warm weather!

Just a little hand soldering of a surface mount component for a new project!

The infinite power of an idea is greater than infinite power.

I don’t usually get the opportunity to walk the floor at trade shows. Therefore, I’ll go in early, get setup and wander around. Most booths don’t have anyone there but occasionally someone is there and you can chat.

At the Automate show I had a new experience. I was walking past a booth where a couple guys were having a bit of a lively discussion. One worked at the booth and the other worked for a vendor for the show.

As I was walking by, the guy at the booth hollered at me and asked if I was an electrical engineer. I said no but sometimes play one on TV, why? He wanted me to hear the other guys idea and explain why it wouldn’t work.

This guy explains he has developed an infinite power system. He has two batteries, with two ‘smart’ chargers and an inverter that power a TV.

Every 12 hours the system switches to the other battery and the corresponding battery charges the other battery from the other one. He was convinced that it would run forever.

The guy at the booth had already gone through Ohm’s law and some other calculations to no avail which is where he roped me in.

I decided to try a different approach after hearing his theory. I presented the idea that he has a shot glass and two five gallon buckets full of alcohol. The buckets represent his two batteries fully charged and the shot glass represents the energy used by the TV every 12 hrs.

On day one, you take a shot from bucket one. That night, bucket two “charges” or refills bucket one by supplying a shot to bucket one but also the TV takes another shot from bucket two so it is now 2 shots low. The next day, bucket one has to recharge bucket two by now providing 2 shots and the TV takes its shot, so bucket one is now three shots low.

You see where this is going. And this is assuming zero energy (alcohol) loss in the charging process. At each iteration, you loose a shot of alcohol so eventually your buckets are empty.

At each iteration, this guy agreed with the status of the volume and reduction of volume in the buckets. I talked this through enough iterations to where we had lost about 7 shots. I thought this was enough to illustrate the gradual loss of energy in the system, especially since he agreed and seemed to understand each iteration and the lack of any external input of energy.

Unfortunately, he said, yea but the batteries I’m using have a ton of kilowatts relative to the what the TV was using.

Not wanting to be the one to crush his dreams and also not having the time to invest further in the discussion, I wished him the best of luck on his endeavor and promised to take a never-ending shot of a tasty beverage in his honor!

I was honored to be invited to participate in the Senior Design Day presentations and competition at Texas State University yesterday. Their Electrical, Civil, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering students presented their Senior Design Projects.
I think I learned more and got some good insight into current technology than they got from any line of questioning I hit them with.

Don’t forget the basics!

We’re developing a new circuit board for a new product. We have the
schematic far enough along to start breadboarding parts of it for testing. I
prefer to use the actual pic in the intended package so we use these handy
adapter boards. Overall testing was going well but we were getting some
unintended responses on some of the I/O’s.

The adapter boards are made to handle several different sizes and packages
with traces on both sides and these are good but not perfect quality boards.
We found a few whiskers on the traces on the back side. These were sanded
off and the problem was reduced but not resolved. Next we tested using an
opto isolating power filter which again helped but didn’t fully resolve the
issue. Finally, we realized that one of the basics in circuit design is to
have a Big Honking Ground Plane (I believe that is the technical term also
referred to as the BHGP or BFGP depending on the industry).

We grabbed some copper foil and added a BHGP under the adapter board and
voila, no more unintended signals.

In our haste to mockup part of the circuit, we ignored a basic element of
circuit design and it showed.

Don’t forget the basics!

I've gotta give a shout out to Ultra-Librarian www.ultralibrarian.com for amazing customer service. The provide schematic symbols, footprints and models for a gazillion parts in a bunch of formats for about every circuit design software platform.

I had downloaded a TQFP 44 pin microprocessor I'm using in a design. As I was working on the schematic, I noticed an error in the pinout. One pin was missing and another was duplicated resulting in about a dozen pins being out of place.

I screen shotted the mfgs datasheet and their symbol and sent it to their generic support email address, not expecting much for at least a few days.

Literally 15 minutes later they sent the updated part!

Completed configuring 135 watches with a custom version of our "Overwatch" app as part of the customer’s silent plant initiative.
No cell service in the plant? No problem
No company cell phones to pair a watch with? No problem
Not allowed to carry cell phones on the floor? No problem
Integrating with your legacy andon system? No problem
Need it customized? No problem

We have a customer that is consolidating their operations and has some of our andon equipment they do not need. They would like to donate this to a college or university that might be able to use it in their Lean Manufacturing Training programs or simulations. We currently have several universities that use our equipment in their simulation areas. If you’re interested or know of someone, please have them get in touch with me.
We can help with getting the system up and running, fixing any current issues with the system and training on how it operates. The facility is a semi clean room situation so the equipment should be in pretty good shape.

Working with a customer who didn’t feel like they had any time. As with most lean efforts we try to visualize the situation for understanding and gap analysis/improvement. This helped them to really see where their time was going and when. They were able to make some changes and did some further work on meeting content and scheduling to free up some time and be more efficient with what they couldn't eliminate.

Working on a new project. I like to breadboard the design with the actual package we plan on using in the project, especially primary components like the microprocessor.
Hand soldering can be tricky but I was glad to find a stencil and carrier board. It turned out pretty good so I’m looking forward to finishing the schematic and running a test.

Sometimes you need to pause, reflect and look at things from a different perspective.

I was so confused for moment. Two different parts of my brain came together unexpectedly! 😂😂😂

If you stumble upon this book, I highly recommend it. This copy was given to me by Mike Daprile during one of my many discussions we had when I was working at Toyota-TMMK completing my undergraduate degree.

This gives the best history of Toyota and their evolution from making looms to cars. I read it every couple years and always glean something new. It really shows how developing the Toyota Production System wasn't just something they wanted to do, they had to do it for their survival.

New Product(Give Away)! New Feature in SFV! See you in Chicago! -

New Product(Give Away)! New Feature in SFV! See you in Chicago!

Board Day! I know it sounds boring.
It’s always exciting to get new pcb’s in. Seeing an idea move to concept, to proof of concept to product design to prototype is really cool.
I’m still waiting on a few components before I can assemble and test the pcb’s, hopefully early next week!
I think this will be a pretty neat new product for us and extremely useful for our customers. This also represents the first of a line that we’ll be launching over the next little bit as well. I’m not quite ready to get into what it is, but will do a video about it soon.

I've used Eagle software for designing PCB's for many yrs and I've used
Fusion 360 for designing stuff to be 3D printed. Autodesk bought Eagle and
recently integrated it with Fusion360. The really cool part is you can now
render the populated board, 3D print it if you want and even design the
enclosure and other elements of the finished product all in the one
environment.
I didn't know how much I would use/rely on this rendering during the design
process. However, I found it very useful and made quite a few changes based
off what I could see. This likely saved me a respin of the board at most
and at least I made a few changes that should make manufacturing easier.



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Feeling like Christmas morning when you’re doing some new product development and the package is delivered!

Biscuit the shop dog is helping oversee the final preparations for the next week in Detroit.
Unfortunately she will not be attending. She would be the best booth babe and bring in big crowds!

See you next week at Booth 6511

Don’t Miss Automate 2023 Learn more about Automate

That point in new product development when you give a sigh of relief that you’re done!
Then you remember you still have to create the user manual, take user and marketing photos, lock in suppliers, pricing, sales & advertising strategy….

This week I get see how shopping carts are made at Unarco in OK. One of those things you don’t think about.
The interesting thing was my Pavlovian conditioning when I saw all the carts lined up in the finished goods area. I immediately started looking for the shelves of food 😂.

Second Toyota plant visit this week.
There’s a common atmosphere no matter which Toyota plant you visit.
It feels more like you’re watching a ballet than a rugby scrum.
Is it perfect?
No and they’ll be the first to tell you they have a long way to go but they have a culture and process to improve.

The first of two Toyota plant visits this week. Even if it’s not TMMK, it still feels like going home. It was a bit chilly so I almost broke out the DieCon jacket!

Talking with a customer recently they were lamenting how they were having trouble connecting with some of the non-manufacturing, transactional areas of the business, like engineering and sales. They were getting a lot of pushback that they were different and “process” improvement doesn’t apply to them. This reminded me of some research I did a few years ago and so I shared this with them.

I had also seen this resistance with several organizations I worked with over the years as I moved across the value stream to non-manufacturing areas. After some reflection I realized it had mostly to do with the groups perception of what a process is and how they defined it.

I then did some research and developed a model for 3 main types of processes, Fixed, Structured and Dynamic. I then worked through the characteristics and the Risks, Planning and Approach for these especially within a new engagement.

This was by no means a silver bullet. However, it did change how I approached groups and started the discussion and really helped to lower the barriers.

Working on a new product that will be a great addition to your Andon system and your entire value chain!

And that’s a wrap
Now comes all the work!

Stop by and see us booth C10870 and score a cool multi tool pen!
Just requires a brief no obligation 2min presentation! 😂😂😂

Ready for Fabtech 2023!!!

We’re planning to do more trade shows in the future. We’ll do a smaller booth than we did at IMTS.
We got one of these cases that converts to a podium that we will try and fit the whole booth inside and check it!
Please share any tips or tricks you have with these.