A high-mix, low-volume automated production line for a unit-bathroom manufacturer

This client is a unit-bathroom manufacturer based in Taichung that exports to major luxury hotels across Japan. Faced with the high-mix, low-volume nature of hotel design, the mass-production mindset and strengths of manufacturers and automation integrators are hard to leverage — and the flexibility of software is exactly the key that let us bridge the two.

The challenge

High-mix, low-volume products

One of the things you and I care about most when traveling is the character of the hotel we stay in — and that is precisely the challenge this client faces. Adopting unit bathrooms turns building a bathroom from a construction job that once relied on large amounts of labor and time into a manufacturing process; installing a unit bathroom is like installing a home appliance, which is not only easier to maintain afterward but also dramatically shortens hotel construction time.

Unlike the tens of thousands of units in a typical manufacturing MOQ, every hotel needs its own distinct style — high-mix and low-volume. Manufacturing rose to prominence because machinery could efficiently mass-produce to lower costs, but when the quantity to be produced is at most a few hundred to a few thousand bathrooms for a single hotel, we need a different strategy to preserve manufacturing's edge — efficiency.

The gap between traditional manufacturers and automation integrators

The key to transforming into smart manufacturing is not merely automating production-line equipment; another key is improving the timeliness of information flow. For example, relying on automation equipment alone to achieve high-mix, low-volume production would require labor to frequently key in production parameters and manually transcribe production status — which is costly, inefficient, and error-prone. And the software talent needed to fill this gap is exactly what traditional manufacturers and automation integrators lack.

In this project, the client needed to modify an internal system to integrate this new production line, and the person assigned the task was the company's only MIS staff member, whose main job was handling colleagues' IT-equipment needs and who was not well versed in software development. A scenario like this — where an automation integrator boosts production efficiency by introducing automation, but the company's overall efficiency can't be pushed any further — has been the picture of many traditional manufacturers' automation efforts.

The solution

To stay highly efficient in high-mix, low-volume production, reducing the resources needed to switch products is key. We developed a Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) system for this client. By providing an API interface and using software polling, whenever the line switches products, production-control staff can send that product's production parameters from any computer to every piece of process equipment on the line, and get the production status of all equipment in real time.

In addition, for the work of modifying the client's internal system, we also provided consulting services to help the MIS staff member analyze the code and clear the obstacles in the project.

The result

After this unit-bathroom module production line went live, the factory floor needs only a small number of operators to carry out high-mix, low-volume manufacturing across processes including tile laying, baking, pressing, demolding, offloading, and packaging.