MES for Photovoltaic Manufacturing
Industry background
Environmental awareness and solar-cell manufacturing growth increase the need for complete quality controls, production-data acquisition and manufacturing-information repositories.
Products and activities include silicon ingots, wafers, cells, modules and associated engineering. Complex processes and demanding export-market quality and traceability requirements create a need for shop-floor automation and integrated information systems.
MES solution described
- Develop line-entry production displays with two alternative layouts.
- One layout uses active production orders as statistical objects; the other aggregates active-order data by time period. Displays show planned quantities, input, cumulative output, defective quantities and WIP. Users can compare line efficiency by period, shift or product.
- Provide workshop-progress monitoring, daily production plans, product-progress displays, daily-plan achievement and line-entry boards so different users can see overall production status in real time.
- Provide industrial-PC test-data interfaces to record test results at different operations.
- Provide precise enquiries and operating-condition traceability for batch process parameters, materials, routes, operation records and equipment records.
The intended scope is comprehensive material management, end-to-end production tracking and detailed material/equipment traceability, making supply-chain operations visible and supporting error prevention across people, machines, materials and methods.
Material management
Material-label printing, warehouse receipts and issues, IQC, put-away, issues to production, returns, material splitting, finished/semi-finished goods movements and storage-location management.
Production management
Label coding and product-label printing, route planning and validation, process error-proofing, loading verification, material traceability, key test-station data, rework control, WIP and efficiency.
Quality management
Incoming quality control (IQC), outgoing quality control (OQC) sampling and production-defect control.
Product traceability
Forward and backward links between products, components and raw materials provide original records for customer and after-sales service. Trace production processes, equipment, operators and testing.
Equipment interfaces
Communicate with inkjet printers; expose web-service interfaces for equipment; retrieve and parse designated equipment-generated files; and call equipment web services.
Data interfaces
Exchange data with ERP in one or both directions. A BI platform provides live production displays and reports.
Applications and intended benefits
- Improve individual-machine automation, batch wafer-loading quantities and machine productivity.
- Reported application benefits include 15–30% reductions in quality, management and material costs and a 55% productivity increase.
- Embed improved process technologies in equipment to improve solar-cell conversion efficiency and reduce cost per watt. Automatic inter-machine transfer and online inspection aim to improve line efficiency, reduce manual intervention and reduce wafer breakage.
- Use standardized coding throughout production control so information is recorded and governed by consistent rules.
- Provide traceability tools to locate production, quality and equipment issues by workshop, line, process, person, time, handling result and method, supporting accountability and improvement.
System diagrams and screens
