The digital transformation will become the mechanism that aligns teams, providing real-time data for optimizing designs through manufacturing, and enabling more capability, consistency, predictability across the entire value stream.
Frank is inspired by opportunities to make a positive impact. For Frank, it all begins with a leadership approach he read about called TRICK: Trust – Respect – Independence – Collaboration – Kindness. When leading teams, and launching projects, Frank relies on this approach to keep his eye focused on continuous improvements and to encourage others in developing new skills and working together toward demonstrated results. A teacher at heart who became an engineer to solve problems, Frank enjoys guiding early-career engineers and helping them see how TRICK can augment their exceptional technical skills in ways that empower them as problem solvers. Frank considers his most successful projects those that leverage the power of many voices and engage all team members during planning and execution. While this can provide quite a challenge, particularly at TE where teams work globally on projects involving many different functions, Frank aligns teams to balance differing objectives, circumstances, experiences, and requirements, so that they can work together effectively. This helps teams leverage insights and experience from colleagues who push the limit of what's possible, toward a solution that enables all participants an opportunity to expand their competencies and grow their careers.
Which manufacturing challenges are you working to solve?
At TE, we focus on developing connectivity solutions that enable our customers to build safer, sustainable, productive and connected products. This means that our electronic components are crucial to enabling advanced capabilities in the technology that is rapidly changing the world. To achieve this, we must live this purpose in our manufacturing processes, which means we must focus on the impact we can have, especially in the communities where we are located.
This means that safety and sustainability play a critical role in everything we do. Our challenge has long been this: How do we manufacture advanced electronic components in the safest, most sustainable way while reducing the impact and risk of production to our employees and the communities where we operate. For example, the plating process involves the use of hazardous chemicals; our challenge is figuring out solutions for safely, securely storing, shipping, handling, and processing these chemicals.
Our focus in operating with accountability and integrity is demonstrated in our innovations for process recycling, energy conservation equipment, and automated chemical replenishments. These all minimize risk and impact. And as we automate more of our processes, we are bringing in the latest, safest equipment, running the most energy-efficient processes, and leveraging the advantage of machine-learning technology to improve across all areas of manufacturing.
Right now, we are actively watching, pursuing, and solving for robust connectivity - for data, power, signal, wireless – not only in our products but also in our plants through the digital factory. Industry 4.0 offers a transformational opportunity in manufacturing, which is giving us greater opportunities to capture and use data effectively, for monitoring, optimizing, and automating critical manufacturing processes. It also offers the potential for step-change improvements - in performance, variance, and stability, especially as artificial intelligence and machine learning accelerate. The digital transformation will become the mechanism that aligns teams, providing real-time data for optimizing designs through manufacturing, and enabling more capability, consistency, predictability across the entire value stream. The companies that lead in digital transformation implementation will have a tremendous advantage over competitors.
What are the challenges in developing new materials for plating?
You need to keep the key points in mind. First, contact materials and their applications are always changing. Second, change is driven by new functional needs as connector systems get denser, smaller, faster ,and exposed to harsher environments. And third, some of the change drivers include new regulations for controlling hazardous materials and sourcing considerations on conflict metals, such as supply issues and metal costs, especially for precious metals.
These new materials need robust, efficient manufacturing processes. This is the challenge I face as a TE Fellow. Typically with a new material, particularly during the period when we are learning about its manufacturability, we likely have a narrower process operating range, even an unknown range. We must address this because the new material’s suitability to our existing equipment and processes may also be an unknown. My role is to work with the technical materials teams, internal and vendors, to develop the most robust manufacturing process so that we can get the most benefit from the new materials, without adding risk, inconsistency, and extra cost to production.
Which market forces could most significantly shape the evolution of manufacturing?
In manufacturing, location has long been an advantage. When companies operate near the customer, they gain advantages in delivery, flexibility, and cost. Today’s geopolitical situation is making location more critical than ever. Companies benefit strategically when they operate over multiple regions, in terms of regulations, supply chains, skilled experience, and capabilities. At TE we operate Centers of Excellence (CoE) on manufacturing processes; this forum gives our process experts opportunities to collaborate on best practices and share innovations across TE. As we ramp up for next generation processes, automation, machine learning, and digital factory, we are able to better leverage greater standardization of the most effective, efficient processes across regions and markets.
Another example is the digital factory has the potential to make manufacturing more efficient while reducing process variation and enabling better detection of potentially nonconforming products, which improves overall risk management. We are deeply engaged in leveraging this emerging program. Machine connectivity is the start and can be complicated due to variations in equipment age and type. After the equipment is connected, we have developed several tools to help reduce waste and improve performance, for example in the amount of time used to find the best process, or in optimized performance from leveraging additional process data to improve process variation. So at TE, in addition to leveraging best practices through our Centers of Excellence, we are also innovating new sensors and measurement technologies to help us fill the gaps in optimizing critical process factors.
The digital transformation will become the mechanism that aligns teams, providing real-time data for optimizing designs through manufacturing, and enabling more capability, consistency, predictability across the entire value stream.
Frank is inspired by opportunities to make a positive impact. For Frank, it all begins with a leadership approach he read about called TRICK: Trust – Respect – Independence – Collaboration – Kindness. When leading teams, and launching projects, Frank relies on this approach to keep his eye focused on continuous improvements and to encourage others in developing new skills and working together toward demonstrated results. A teacher at heart who became an engineer to solve problems, Frank enjoys guiding early-career engineers and helping them see how TRICK can augment their exceptional technical skills in ways that empower them as problem solvers. Frank considers his most successful projects those that leverage the power of many voices and engage all team members during planning and execution. While this can provide quite a challenge, particularly at TE where teams work globally on projects involving many different functions, Frank aligns teams to balance differing objectives, circumstances, experiences, and requirements, so that they can work together effectively. This helps teams leverage insights and experience from colleagues who push the limit of what's possible, toward a solution that enables all participants an opportunity to expand their competencies and grow their careers.
Which manufacturing challenges are you working to solve?
At TE, we focus on developing connectivity solutions that enable our customers to build safer, sustainable, productive and connected products. This means that our electronic components are crucial to enabling advanced capabilities in the technology that is rapidly changing the world. To achieve this, we must live this purpose in our manufacturing processes, which means we must focus on the impact we can have, especially in the communities where we are located.
This means that safety and sustainability play a critical role in everything we do. Our challenge has long been this: How do we manufacture advanced electronic components in the safest, most sustainable way while reducing the impact and risk of production to our employees and the communities where we operate. For example, the plating process involves the use of hazardous chemicals; our challenge is figuring out solutions for safely, securely storing, shipping, handling, and processing these chemicals.
Our focus in operating with accountability and integrity is demonstrated in our innovations for process recycling, energy conservation equipment, and automated chemical replenishments. These all minimize risk and impact. And as we automate more of our processes, we are bringing in the latest, safest equipment, running the most energy-efficient processes, and leveraging the advantage of machine-learning technology to improve across all areas of manufacturing.
Right now, we are actively watching, pursuing, and solving for robust connectivity - for data, power, signal, wireless – not only in our products but also in our plants through the digital factory. Industry 4.0 offers a transformational opportunity in manufacturing, which is giving us greater opportunities to capture and use data effectively, for monitoring, optimizing, and automating critical manufacturing processes. It also offers the potential for step-change improvements - in performance, variance, and stability, especially as artificial intelligence and machine learning accelerate. The digital transformation will become the mechanism that aligns teams, providing real-time data for optimizing designs through manufacturing, and enabling more capability, consistency, predictability across the entire value stream. The companies that lead in digital transformation implementation will have a tremendous advantage over competitors.
What are the challenges in developing new materials for plating?
You need to keep the key points in mind. First, contact materials and their applications are always changing. Second, change is driven by new functional needs as connector systems get denser, smaller, faster ,and exposed to harsher environments. And third, some of the change drivers include new regulations for controlling hazardous materials and sourcing considerations on conflict metals, such as supply issues and metal costs, especially for precious metals.
These new materials need robust, efficient manufacturing processes. This is the challenge I face as a TE Fellow. Typically with a new material, particularly during the period when we are learning about its manufacturability, we likely have a narrower process operating range, even an unknown range. We must address this because the new material’s suitability to our existing equipment and processes may also be an unknown. My role is to work with the technical materials teams, internal and vendors, to develop the most robust manufacturing process so that we can get the most benefit from the new materials, without adding risk, inconsistency, and extra cost to production.
Which market forces could most significantly shape the evolution of manufacturing?
In manufacturing, location has long been an advantage. When companies operate near the customer, they gain advantages in delivery, flexibility, and cost. Today’s geopolitical situation is making location more critical than ever. Companies benefit strategically when they operate over multiple regions, in terms of regulations, supply chains, skilled experience, and capabilities. At TE we operate Centers of Excellence (CoE) on manufacturing processes; this forum gives our process experts opportunities to collaborate on best practices and share innovations across TE. As we ramp up for next generation processes, automation, machine learning, and digital factory, we are able to better leverage greater standardization of the most effective, efficient processes across regions and markets.
Another example is the digital factory has the potential to make manufacturing more efficient while reducing process variation and enabling better detection of potentially nonconforming products, which improves overall risk management. We are deeply engaged in leveraging this emerging program. Machine connectivity is the start and can be complicated due to variations in equipment age and type. After the equipment is connected, we have developed several tools to help reduce waste and improve performance, for example in the amount of time used to find the best process, or in optimized performance from leveraging additional process data to improve process variation. So at TE, in addition to leveraging best practices through our Centers of Excellence, we are also innovating new sensors and measurement technologies to help us fill the gaps in optimizing critical process factors.
