Nelson Global

An executive with over 20 years of experience in manufacturing engineering, operations, regional and corporate responsibilities in automotive and industrial processes, mainly metal mechanics, with a high level of experience as Tier 1 supporting mainly OEMs. Franklin is an Industrial Engineer with a Masters’s Degree in Direction of Operations, post degrees in Operational Management and Lean Manufacturing from important institutions, carrying several automotive certifications from different OEM’s as GM and VW, including automotive certifications as IATF 16949:2016, VDA 6.3, ISO 14001, GD&T Core Tools, GD&T, MSA, between others diplomas.

Bringing this experience, Franklin Rodriguez serves to Nelson Global as regional director of North America, advanced manufacturing engineering, supporting manufacturing and engineering responsibilities in 10 North American manufacturing plants, eight in the U.S. and two in MX.

Previous experience as a regional manufacturing engineering manager, plant general manager, and director of operations, among other functional areas responsibilities back in time.

Advanced manufacturing, as part of the great engineering field, drives most of the operational results in most manufacturing industries. I call ‘Operational Automation’ the first couple of steps before automation or project execution itself, including all analysis and preparation to ensure the right selection of automation; everything starts with the current operation and a clear path where to go as part of the year over year improvement expectation and strategy to achieve results.

Continuous improvement has been a pillar in the advanced manufacturing engineering field, heavily supported by automation in some cases. Still, automation is not always an easy word; sometimes, automation starts with an idea and becomes the most popular topic in the action registers, meetings or list of activities to do in a company. Still, we do not always talk about automation as we should. The main goal before the automation concept or idea is related to what the need is. Where are we? Where would we like to be in the near future? What is our vision and our goal for the selected process? Need to identify what is the need in a very clear way, not always automation will represent a high amount of investment, it will if the technology to implement is not the right now, that is why it is critical to evaluate what do we need to do to improve our process, where we want to be after automation technology project implementation, what are our goals and KPI’s we would impact, in some cases you can start thinking in general, or evaluate the high impact details needed to be improved, all automation projects should start with data recollection and analysis, otherwise we have the risk of not implementing the right technology or implementing a technology will affect the expected return of investment, advanced manufacturing engineering will be able to cover all steps and processes required to evaluate, select, plan, drive, execute and test the right technology and automation based on the requirement and the project, if you are not heavy involved in this process, risk of not selecting the right process will increase the chances of not getting the right result, application will depend on the expected result, investment not necessarily should be high in terms of automation, now we have several opportunities and access to new technology, perfect samples are the ‘Cobots,’ with great flexibility and easy programming, at significant less cost than a robot, both applications work great, just need to select what is the product and process involved in order to review and select what type of technology to implement, main driver will be the product core competency or cross section, volume and repeatability of the process, ideally to be implemented by families to reduce changeover and optimize efficiency, productivity and as consequence output increase in the production line.

"Advanced manufacturing as part of the great engineering field drives most of the operational results in most manufacturing industries"

In this particular article, I will talk about ‘Cobots,’ being the perfect tool to increase productivity by managing labor if the case is well implemented, taking care of Safety regulations as the primary path of implementation, with great flexibility in the metal mechanic industry and several other industries, a cost-effective solution vs. other automation products, a ‘Cobot’ will cover several applications as material handling, MIG welding, plasma/laser cutting, inspection support, packing, labeling, scanning, between others, automation is not complex if you have the perfect mix of process/product/supplier/management, but the most important thing, the right justification to be able to sale the benefit and explain the gain not only with good stories, need tangible numbers, return of investment is not supported by nice wording, should be engineering activities and data-driven decisions behind every project.

Implementing a technology or automation project is not completed after the final acceptance or start of production of the project; evaluation and monitoring should be part of the continuous activities to evaluate if implementation results are as expected, not there or better. This information will help to adjust and read across/benchmark with other processes and products, and continuous improvement will always be part of the next day. Automation is a key player for the continued growth of the current or new business; in all cases, automation should end with data to be able to measure, capable of control and improvement in order to replicate or implement again and continue the trend of operational automation as part of the continues improvement mentality.