‘Factory in a box’ anticipates changing manufacturing needs

Follow @TheManufacturer

The group, which started working on the concept in the summer of 2017, aimed to build a single electronics manufacturing line using cargo containers that can be moved to locations as demand dictates.

Collaboration was driven by the expected changes in manufacturing sparked by Industry 4.0, including cloud-based solutions, robotics and new electronic manufacturing IoT solutions, all of which will demand greater agility and flexibility from manufacturers.

Potential use cases include:

• Building for ‘country of origin’ requirements – the container can be driven to a location, build the required volume, and then be moved again as needed.
• New product introduction – With new products, time to market is a competitive advantage. By moving the “factory in a box” to partners, prototyping can be quickly done and fixes quickly performed and tested.
• Disaster recovery – When a site is hit by a natural disaster, business continuity plans kick in but can take time. With a spare portable factory, critical customer orders can still be achieved in a timely manner.

In late 2017, the project took a step forward at Nokia’s Digital Creativity Lab opening in Munich, where a cargo container with a collaborative robot assembly station was packed, moved to a new location by truck, then restarted within hours at the new location where small Lego cars were assembled, proving the precision of the machines.

The final step in the proof of concept was achieved on February 9, 2018, when full electronic manufacturing of a printed circuit board and robotic assembly and testing took place.

Grant Marshall, head of Supply Network and Engineering in Nokia Operations, said: “These factories are perfectly suited to meet regional and innovation startup requirements, and can be as large as needed to meet build requirements by simply adding additional containers to the location.

“This is a new business model Nokia would like to offer to its customers, and we are ready to experiment with this Proof of Concept with our first customers in 2018.”