The Birth of the vision tester at AES : Who wants the new process technology

Abstract

In response to price competition, AES was established as a manufacturing branch in Singapore by an American electronics company. As product variety grew, production functions became more numerous and technologically complex, putting new pressures on previously manually performed tasks. As errors and quality issues grew, more attention was paid to advancing process technology using new technologies. The key benefit was the ease of execution of the process and the decreasing cycle time. The Vision Tester, a new automated piece of testing equipment that enabled more accurate and rapid testing of parts. Despite the small cost of development, the benefits were numerous and important. Key issues addressed in the case study are: the factors that influence the incidence of process variety, the responsibility for handling process variety split between the production personnel (P) and the manufacturing engineers (ME), and the distribution of process variety and responsibility shifted