8 NOVEMBER 2023OPINIONBy Marcelo Varreira, Manufacturing Engineering Director - North America, ElectroluxThe multidisciplinary organization works in order to support and maximize the results of the Automation and Manufacturing strategy, and consequently of the business. It has been an alternative of business architecture for obtaining better returns on industrial assets and investment.Over time, after the wave of standardization of product design, through Design for Manufacturing and Automation (DfMA) techniques, where much of the work was conceived between the areas of Design, R&D and Manufacturing, the scope of this drive reaches to the entire operation chain in a more integrated way, connecting the entire organization, now, such as IT, Supply Chain, Purchasing, HR and others as well. Just to remind, in a first wave, product platforms with suitable design were developed so that manufacturing operations were carried out by robots or automatable stations, in order to create standardization and consequently increase the scale of the operation. This increased the possibilities of using robotics and automation, increased the scale that helped to absorb the heavy investments. A simple example, operations of joining or assembling two or more parts, as in an appliance, washing machines or cookers, have on average between 50 to 80 different fasteners, with different specifications, sizes and some with high complexity for automation projects. It makes returns on investments longer and automation design highly complex and expensive.The main benefits of these organizations are manufacturing costs more competitive, better quality with reduced variation, therefore the faster consumer requirements met, etc. The THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY IN INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS DRIVEN BY AUTOMATION, CONNECTIVITY AND SUSTAINABILITYMarcelo Varreira
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