Digital Transformation Drives Improvements in Manufacturing and Operations

In the manufacturing sector, Quality Control (QC) is crucial for ensuring products meet customer expectations and maintain high standards of reliability and performance. This critical process supports the delivery of defect-free products by leveraging a multidimensional combination of established specifications, industry best practices and strict adherence to standardized systems.

QC errors or oversights can destroy customer confidence and decimate brand reputation. Conversely, efficient QC methods help organizations elevate the customer experience, manage costs more effectively and minimize waste while avoiding the reputational damage and liability often associated with unsatisfactory products.

An effective QC process detects anomalies and provides data-driven insights that help prevent future problems. This is why organizational QC programs often attempt to obtain a holistic perspective that reflects assessment from numerous angles. Depending on the product in question, QC measures may often consist of:

• General inspection
  This approach, backed by thorough manufacturing practices and incremental documentation, relies on inspection of the finished product to ensure quality. While upstream sampling may also occur, final inspection usually drives the decision to approve a given lot or batch.
• Workstation inspection
  Industries with complex products often have workers inspect parts before moving them downstream to the next workstation or process step.
• Statistical review
  With this approach, a product batch is sampled and assessed at either scheduled or random points in the production process. For this sampling and statistical analysis to catch defects, product quality must already be relatively consistent over time.

Total Quality Management (TQM) represents a broader paradigm that encompasses a range of approaches like these. The goal is to infuse a quality mindset across the entire organizational culture, training teammates to identify concerns and empowering informed intervention that can help optimize the end result. Today’s TQM programs are increasingly technology-driven and are growing more capable of linking to data management platforms that deliver enhanced quality insights.  

Because Molex consistently evaluates and uplevels its TQM initiatives to support an exceptional customer experience, it was a tremendous honor to be selected as a 2024 Manufacturing Leadership Awards winner for project work designed to enhance QC efforts.

Sponsored by the U.S.-based Manufacturing Leadership Council — the digital transformation arm of the National Association of Manufacturers — the Manufacturing Leadership Awards distinguish organizations making significant strides in the transition to digital manufacturing. These awards, in their 20th season as of 2024, honor the most outstanding manufacturing companies and their leaders for groundbreaking use of advanced manufacturing technology.

The 2024 awards program featured 9 project categories and 2 additional categories for individuals. Nominations were judged by an outside panel of digital manufacturing experts with extensive industry experience. Project category judges assessed a given initiative’s impact on improving manufacturing processes, furthering business goals and advancing company strategy. Judges also considered the level of digital technology employed.

The Molex initiative selected for recognition applied data analytics to help transform and improve QC-related production operator effectiveness at the 60,000 square-meter Molex Guadalajara plant that opened in 2022. Officially named the Twinax Cable Production Operator Transformation Project, this initiative was specifically recognized as the winner in the Digital Network Connectivity award category.

Initially, the project served as a test to help gauge data-driven improvements in Molex’s core manufacturing processes. While the assessment involved the use of twinaxial cabling, also known as twinax, its outcomes can apply to numerous other manufacturing operations. In fact, though this project was originally piloted at the Guadalajara plant, the overall process has since been adopted across Molex as a key component of broader manufacturing operations related to QC commitment.

Twinax was chosen for use in the pilot project because of the way this product has been traditionally evaluated for quality. Twinax cable assemblies are stored on large reels, each of which can contain roughly 21,000 feet of cable. That’s equivalent to about 4 miles, 6.5 kilometers, or almost 60 American football fields. When loaded with aluminum or copper wire, these metal or wooden reels weigh hundreds of pounds.

A number of QC measures are typically undertaken to appraise the quality of twinax cable; but prior to this project, the all-important physical evaluation component involved production operators assessing product samples from the outer end of each massive reel. Interior cable sections on the reel were too far in to be visualized, increasing the odds that poor-quality cable could make its way downstream in the supply chain.

The Twinax Cable Production Operator Transformation Project replaced manual QC methods with a real-time, technology-driven process control system. The new approach collects detailed volumes of product data that operators can evaluate continually. This facilitates faster error detection, supporting rapid production line adjustments that help avoid product issues, defects and deviations down the line.

Armed with these ongoing, data-driven quality insights into the entire length of twinax cable on any given reel, operators have since been able to cut their physical inspection times in half and promptly quarantine any concerning product batches.

Molex prides itself on a culture of quality and collaboration that builds on Koch Industries’ Principle-Based Management (PBM) approach, which empowers individual and group decision making. This environment enables global interdisciplinary teamwork and consultative customer interactions, supporting focused awareness that helps drive continuous quality improvements. 

Molex teams use multi-parameter simulators, stringent testing measures and the latest technology tools to help ensure design for manufacturability, the highest levels of uniformity and consistent product excellence. Examples of existing capabilities and customer offerings include: 

• The Molex Global Reliability Test Lab, which offers a comprehensive spectrum of quality-focused product evaluation techniques ranging from specialty equipment to digital simulations
• The Molex supply chain orchestration initiative, which equips teams with real-time insights that optimize the overall quality experience to give our collaborators a timely competitive edge
• Advanced digital and online tools like our new Automotive Virtual Showroom, which utilize the latest technology to uplevel the interactive customer experience and support the selection of quality products.   
  

At every stage and across all levels in the design, manufacturing and delivery process, Molex aims to equip teams with insights that ensure top-quality products and outstanding customer experience. The 2024 Manufacturing Leadership Awards recognition is well-deserved acknowledgement of these dedicated, ongoing efforts.