AUTOMATION
Manufacturing visibility
Awareness of the entire manufacturing flow is a key factor for companies looking to find
every incremental improvement possible from their fab’s process. Prediktor is a
Manufacturing Execution System (MES) company headquartered in Norway who have
introduced an MES to the PV industry. Here the company discusses the benefit to PV
manufacturers from the implementation of a successful MES.
Issue II 2009
L
eaders in the PV industry recognize that development means people need information
the installation and use of a plant wide support now, more than ever before.
real time information system, also termed a Introduction of MES systems is the proven tool for:
Manufacturing Execution System (MES), is vital to ring6 Increase ramp-up speed for new plants
stay profitable on the road to grid parity. An MES ring6 Optimize production recipes and set points
-pv-management.com system collects data in real time, stores the data in ring6 Maximise yield
a structured way and delivers information that ring6 Reduce cost of operation, including reduced
.solar
enables the optimization of production activities personnel cost
www
from order launch to finished goods. According to ring6 Improve equipment utilisation and effectiveness
MESA (The Association for Manufacturing
36
Enterprise Solutions), the goal of a MES solution is The information hub
to improve execution throughput by 5 to 15%. A real-time MES system is connected to
manufacturing tools and process units to collect
Why MES in the PV industry and organise data. The heart of Prediktor Solar
The PV industry has experienced a tremendous MES suite is a real-time material tracking engine,
growth during the last years driven by an almost which continuously collects data to maintain a
unlimited demand for PV installations. The financial virtual plant model.
crisis has changed this and solar cells/modules
inventory build ups are experienced. This has When material is moved in the real process, the
slowed down the production as well as the material is also moved within the virtual computer
construction of new production sites. Especially in model based on automatic data collection from the
such times, the best-in-class manufacturers will process equipment as well as manual data
survive and grow through the hard times. collected via i.e. operator screens or bar code
readers. The computer model maintains a mirror of
Large scale production operations cannot run what is going on in the real process. This model
Fig 1: Manufacturing without a sound information system. PV is highly then feeds a relational database and a time series
flow for PV technical in nature, new plants are built and database, so that data at a later time may be
manufacturing. Wafer ramped up quickly and the speed of technology extracted and grouped together based on different
preperation selection rules thereby allowing production
reporting for both analysis and optimisation.
A substantial part of a MES installation work relates
to implementation of the automatic data
acquisition. Prediktor has profound experience in
interfacing a range of tools and process units used
in the PV industry based on industry standard
protocols such as OPC and SECS/GEM standards.
A selection of the equipment suppliers that
Prediktor has interfaced with are shown in the
figure below. In a typical installation several
thousand real-time data values are collected from
the process each second. A MES system should
also interface to ERP systems. The ERP system will
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44