The Future of Wire Harness Production
By Patrick Boyer, Komax Corporation

For several years, bench-top and semi-automatic crimping machines have been the tools of choice for the production of wire harnesses. Many factors, inside and outside the industry, have combined to merit a comparison of current crimping processes to newer, fully-automated and significantly less labor-intensive harness assembly technology.

For many, the very basic concepts on how to get the most out of automatic crimping machines, which were first published in an article in the March/April 08 issue of Wiring Harness News, are no longer enough. These points are: 

1)       Reducing down time by:

a)       Maximizing run time by planning and grouping jobs in terms of the longest changeover time for the application or terminal type.

b)       Decreasing wait time by staging all the material for the next job at the machine, before it needs to be run.

c)       Designating a dedicated tooling area in which applicators are calibrated and inspected prior to use on a job.

d)       Calibrating all presses, automatic and bench-top, to a standard shut height.  The most common press shut height is 5.346 inches (135.78mm).

e)       Networking your machines and going paperless. It will eliminate the need for programming jobs into the machine; they will be created off-line and sent to the appropriate machines. Operators only have to call up the job, quickly verify the set-up, and run production.

2)       Increasing up time by:

a)       Improving the material quality and packaging. Automatic machines are designed around the assumption that the wire will be relatively straight and concentric.

b)       Performing regular maintenance (PM) on the machines and tooling will keep them efficient and in top performance. Periodic reviews and calibrations by qualified technicians will also keep machines and tools as reliable as when they were new.

c)       Ongoing operator and service training will reduce the learning curve and considerably increase machine up time.

d)       Eliminating the time required to either walk over to the quality assurance (QA) station or the QA inspector by installing integrated QA devices directly at each machine.

Today companies and industries are facing circumstances that make the full automation of wire harness processing more advantageous. Specifically, what are these situations? 

1.       Harness assemblies are becoming more complex, therefore, manual insertion processes result in higher scrap rates. The increased complexity and handling of wires also causes additional quality control issues.

2.       To save cost and weight, the automotive and white goods industries have sought smaller components with pitch as small as 0.05” and wire sizes down to 26AWG, making it more difficult to process manually.

3.       Many companies that outsourced their production to low-wage countries are now facing rising labor costs, up to a 78% increase over a five-year period. (See Chart #1: Wage Increases by Country).

Wage Increase from 2002 to 2007
(Source: OECD/ethicalcorp.com)

4.       Companies are also facing variable costs that are out of their control, such as fuel surcharges, customs duties, and taxes. For many other industries, leaving the U.S. for production is not an option.

5.       Lengthy transit times from foreign production often cause work-in-progress, inventory, and engineering rework costs due to the time lag involved.

For these reasons, companies are evaluating and investing in fully automated wire harness assembly systems in both high- and low-wage countries, according to figures from Komax Corporation.

The main advantages of fully automated wire harness production compared to the cut-and-crimp process are:

• Increased repeatability and accuracy of full automation results in guaranteed quality of products.

• Integrated quality checks can be traced and completed throughout the process.

• The cost of full automation is more manageable, and the profitability shifts from labor to material costs.

• Manual labor may be moved to less repetitive tasks, thereby eliminating inherent fatigue risks.

• Product lead times are reduced significantly by placing fully automatic machines near or at the final assembly plants.

• Work-in-Progress (WIP), physical production, and inventory space requirements are also reduced. This will permit the implementation of high-mix, low-volume inventory with JIT and Kanban production, increasing productivity while decreasing logistical requirements. 

These factors apply to fully automated equipment installed anywhere in the world, regardless of whether it involves a high- or low-wage country.

The manual assembly process using conventional bench-top or semi-automatic machines is compared with fully automatic harness machines in this illustration.

Fully automatic wire harness assembly systems, like this Zeta 633/656 from Komax, maximize productivity while controlling costs.

The Zeta 633/656 is capable of producing the harness shown below, which is made with seven connectors (four different types), 47 wire (six different types), and a total of 94 insertions, in less than three minutes.

Patrick Boyer is a 15-year veteran of the wire processing industry and currently works for Komax Corporation as harness machine product manager and automation project manager. For more information, contact Patrick at patrick.boyer@komaxgroup.com.

---