Smart Factory Offline0 pages

Smart Factory

Automotive Offline
Virtual Station

Operations
Centre

Explorer

Smart Device

Process
Improvement

Business Challenges
Managing high‐value work‐in‐
progress inventory (WIP) is a
complex and costly production
activity. Offline is the post‐
Assembly phase of production
where WIP units leave the
relative captivity and
sequencing of the Assembly
Line and move freely around
site as they are prepared for
customer orders. The process
of moving WIP through the
major verification, test and
repair stages is only loosely
constrained and non‐
sequential. This makes
maintaining visibility of where
WIP is, measuring how long it
has been there, optimising flow
and maximising resource
productivity a significant
challenge. Both production
teams trying to get WIP
finished and out the door and
management teams trying to
reduce cost and increase
customer satisfaction benefit
from increased visibility and
accurate production metrics.

MAXIMISE OFFLINE EFFICIENCY
 

Measure, Analyse, Improve 
The major cost factors for any Offline test 
and verification function are the lack of 
visibility, measurability and traceability of 
vehicles as they move through the quality 
control, adjustment and rework stages of the 
process. This has significant knock‐on effects 
for WIP management, resource balancing, 
space utilisation,  product distribution and 
order‐to‐cash cycle. 
Conventionally, the location of a vehicle 
progressing through verification, test and 
repair stages is only recorded by manual scanning prior to a task commencing. This 
very sparse location data, coupled with no single system to manage location 
information for the enterprise, means that 
considerable human effort is spent finding vehicles 
and recording current location. 
Furthermore, because all the human‐gathered 
information is not recorded, there is no continuous 
historic measure of any complex processes, which 
leads to educated guesses about the steps 
required to make improvements, rather than data‐
driven decisions. 

Business Benefits

Complete Visibility, Automatically 

Lower WIP levels and costs

Smart Factory Offline brings an unprecedented level of visibility and control to the 
Offline process, allowing production and management teams to: 

Lower operating costs
Better order‐to‐cash

Easily visualise the real‐time location and status of all WIP vehicles 

Improved throughput

Automatically capture and analyse vehicle and process metrics 

Waste reduction
Better resource utilisation
Better quality assurance
Better space utilisation

including cycle times, dwell times, occupancies and lead times 
Set process goals and metrics against which exception 

information is distributed to the user community  
Ensure Process Steps are monitored, measured and alerts raised 

when deviations from plan occur 
Integrate location‐driven WIP status back into existing production 

systems to improve operational decision making and audit trail 
fidelity 

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© 2014 Ubisense Limited  

Smart Factory Automotive Offline, Rev 3en‐GB‐140205