Material Assembly#

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Material Assembly is the process of combining individual Materials into a new and different Product, which can be a Finished Good or merely part of it, during manufacturing.

The assembly operation entails Materials being joined together using permanent or semipermanent methods.

An assemble may also refer to a Bill of Material (BOM), which is the name given to the assembly items or Materials needed for a given Material Assembly process.

This document will guide you through the set up and usage of the different Material Assembly modes available in Critical Manufacturing MES.

Overview#

Assemble can be performed in the following ways:

• Automatic At Track In - where source materials are consumed automatically at track in, without changing the quantity of the main material.

• Automatic At Track Out - similar to Automatic At Track In except that the BOM consumption takes place at track out.

• Explicit - where source materials must be consumed explicitly between Track In and Track Out. The quantity of the main material is not changed, and it needs to be fully assembled (up until the primary quantity). This is, the remaining quantity must be 0.

• Explicit Add - where source materials must be consumed explicitly between Track In and Track Out and the quantity of the main material is increased with each assemble. For this Assembly Type, the quantity of the main material must be equal to 0, and the quantity is increased from there on.

• Explicit Long Running - where the assembled total quantity is started, but you do not have to complete the assemble of all the components. You can assemble a component, save, and exit. Then later you can continue the process.

Automatic#

Automatic at TrackIn#

Automatic at TrackOut#

Useful information regarding the images above:

• CF1, CF2, and CF3 are Consumable Feeds
• Mx, My, and Mz are the Consumables
• M1 is the Finished or Semi Finished Good
• StepX, StepY, and StepZ are the Source Steps
• Step1 is the Assembly Step

The following list specifies the sequence of steps necessary to configure an Automatic Assemble for Material:

1. Create a BOM of Scope Material - a BOM is a versioned object which needs to go through the Change Management process, and it is bound to a specific target Product.

2. Associate the BOM to the right Step(s). To do that, edit the BOM Context of the Step(s) and specify that the Assembly Type is either Automatic At Track In or Automatic At Track Out.

3. Be sure that the Resource which provides Services to the Step where the Material will be assembled has at least as many Sub-Resources of type Consumable Feed as there are BOM source Products defined in the BOM.

4. Create as many source Materials of the source Products defined in the BOM in enough quantities to fulfill the required assemble quantities. These Materials need to be attached as consumables to the Sub-Resources of the main Resource. The source Materials must be in the defined BOM Step, and to be able to attach the source Materials to the respective Consumable Feeds, there must be a match between the Material required Service and the Consumable Feed Resource provided Services. The Consumable Feed Services must be defined with the Processing Type Consumable Feed.

5. Create the main Material and move it to the Step where it should be assembled.

6. Track in the main Material. At the Track-In operation, the system will verify that the Resource has all the Materials, which must have not expired, in the necessary quantities to fulfill the BOM requirements. This is true for Automatic At Track In, and for Automatic at Track Out with the Track-In CheckMode as Quantity.

   Note

   If the Track-In CheckMode is Product, the system checks if there is any quantity of Materials to start the process - not all the materials are needed.

   If the Track-In CheckMode is None, there is no verification, but there will be an error at Track-Out if until then the consumables are not added to the Consumable Feeds.

7. In case the Assembly Type is defined as Automatic At Track In, the BOM consumption will be performed automatically during the Track-In operation, and the main Material quantity is not changed.

8. In case the Assembly Type is set to Automatic At Track Out, the BOM consumption will take place automatically during the Track-Out operation, and the main Material quantity is not changed.

Manual#

Explicit#

In the image above, Material quantity can be zero means that it must be zero for Explicit Add, but when using Explicit or Explicit Long Running it must be different to zero.

The following list specifies the sequence of steps necessary to configure a Manual Assemble for Material:

1. Create a BOM of Scope Material - a BOM is a versioned object which needs to go through the Change Management process, and it is bound to a specific target Product.

2. Associate the BOM to the right Step(s). To do that, edit the BOM Context fo the Step(s)and specify that the Assembly Type is Manual.

3. Create as many source Materials of the source Products defined in the BOM in enough quantities to fulfill the required assemble quantities.These Materials need to be Queued in the defined BOM Source Step. Moreover, for assemble purposes, the source Materials cannot have expired, that is, if an expiration date is defined, it must be in the future. Additionally, the Remaining Floor Life property must not be 0.

4. Create the main Material and move it to the Step where it should be assembled.

5. Track in the main Material.

6. While the Material is In Process, perform as many Assemble Materials as desired:

   • If the Assembly Type is Explicit, the main Material Primary Quantity must be fully assembled before the Material can be tracked out and its Primary Quantity remains unchanged after each assemble operation.

   • If the Assembly Type is Explicit Add, the main Material can be tracked out at any time and every time an assemble operation takes place, the Primary Quantity is increased. As mentioned above, for this Assembly Type, the quantity of the main Material must be equal to 0.

   • If the Assembly Type is Explicit Long Running the assembled total quantity is started, but you do not have to complete the assemble of all the components. You can assemble a component, save and exit. Then later you can continue the process. And like the Explicit Assembly Type, its Primary Quantity remains unchanged after each assemble operation.

7. Track out the main Material.

Weigh And Dispense#

There is a special Material Assembly mode when used through the Weigh and Dispense operation that has several configuration needs that apply to that specific use case. If you wast to know more about this operation, see the Weigh And Dispense tutorial or open the operation page under the Weigh and Dispense Material page in the User Guide.

Replacing or Disassembling a Previously Assembled Material#

In some industries, components are assembled temporarily merely to support some operations and then later removed when they are not longer needed. For example, in the semiconductor industry, a protective tape is added to wafers before the grinding process, and this take is then removed after the grinding process is complete.

In other cases, one or more previously assembled components may need to be replaced some step ahead. For example, in the metallurgy industry, the lubricant that is consumed at the beginning of the process needs to be replaced before the Finish Good Product is completed.

The Assembly Type Replace And Disassemble is used in both of these cases. Essentially a new BOM, of Scope Material, with the component(s) to be removed or replaced is created and assigned to the Step(s) where these operations must be performed.

Moreover, when you use the Disassemble feature, you need to define how many units of the Material have to perform the Disassemble process, and this usually means all of the units. This Disassemble action will reduce the Assembled Quantity property and return the consumed quantity to other source Materials according to the definitions of the BOM.

However, if you choose to use the Replace Material operation, both the Disassemble and Assemble operations will be performed sequentially, with the main difference being that the quantity to disassemble and assemble is not moved back to the source Materials but rather consumed in the assembly process.