Sean Chang, the quality assurance division and smart sensor division director of Delta's Industrial Automation Business Group (IABG), started his career at Delta Electronics 23 years ago. “I've been working for Delta Electronics since graduation. I got my first job here and never left the company,” said Sean. Back then, he began as a thermal engineer and then joined the R&D team for AC motor drives and fans, gaining both technical know-how and experience.
Best Quality Brings Success
For the past two years, the number of new companies that provide automation products in the industrial markets of China has grown rapidly. The sudden increase of automation product providers has caused a price war in local automation markets. As a leading automation provider in Taiwan and China, Delta's IABG wasn't worried facing this fierce challenge, because it began its transformation years ago. However, the transformation brought its own challenges. The IABG is now facing well-known, experienced international competitors from Europe, Japan and America; what's more, customers for high-end applications demand more on performance, service, and most importantly, quality.
“The key factor to success is better quality,” said Sean. “The quality of Delta's automation products and solutions has been improving, and we are receiving a lot of positive feedback from customers and users.” However, Sean was not completely satisfied. He realized that only with better quality could the IABG meets the requirements of high-end users and advanced applications. Sean thus came up with quality improvement strategies after taking over the responsibility of senior director for the quality assurance division of the IABG.
Sean identified two main reasons for quality issues: production flaws and faulty design. He starts with production flaws. The production flaw inspection for industrial automation products is much harder than for 3C products. Consumers normally use 3C products in the relatively mild conditions of daily living, while automation products often find application in a variety of extreme environments. Cold, hot, dry, humid, dusty and high vibration environments are all common conditions for industrial applications.
Sean pointed out, “Simulation testing and inspection are difficult during the production process, but the test and inspection results directly affect yield rate.” Faced with quality issues, Sean was determined to apply process inspection and testing at every production phase to eliminate defective products due to production and environmental issues. “We stabilized the production lines with thorough and advanced inspection and testing, eliminating production issues, and minimizing the number of defective products. Then, we moved to the second phase, identifying defective production caused by faulty design,” said Sean.
For the past decade, The IABG has continued to grow with rapid product line expansion. Despite an excellent R&D team for new product development and design, it's hard to reach perfection with time pressures. “Once the issues of faulty design are clearly exposed, the R&D team can conduct design improvement for better product quality,” said Sean. “Quality improvement is a long-term project and target. We will continue improving our products with efforts from across departments.”
New Smart Sensor for Higher Automation Solution Efficiency
For Sean, every production process concerns product quality. However, Sean considers a product's original design and testing just as important for product quality—and product design quality control is what Sean does now as the director of smart sensor.
Sean introduced smart sensor with an interesting metaphor, “For an automation solution, the PLC is the brain, inverters are the muscles, and smart sensors are the eyes and nose that receive information from the industrial environment and production lines and sends it back to the brain for judgment.” Smart sensors are able to raise the precision of the automated inspection, making an automation solution even more powerful and complete. It also helps to lower the production flaws caused by human negligence and increase the yield rate and product quality.
As to the quality of smart sensors, Sean demands his R&D team conduct every test precisely during the design phase. He encourages his team to spend equal focus and time on product development and testing. “It takes a lot of time, cost and human effort, but it's a practical and effective way to avoid faulty design for better product quality,” said Sean.
Among the various smart sensors, Sean decided to start with rotary sensors, which include photoelectric sensors and fiber sensors. Sean gladly revealed that three new rotary sensor series will be launched by the end of this year. “We will share our new sensors with Chinese users through our sales channels and satisfy the needs of the industrial automation markets in China,” said Sean. “In the future, we will expand our smart sensor product lines and cover applications such as safety light curtains and 2D/3D inspection for high-end industries.”
With the upcoming launch of the new smart sensors, Sean is confident that the IABG will provide more powerful and complete automation solutions to achieve a greater use of industrial automation and solve the issues of manpower shortages.
Best R&D Team is the Driving Force
Developing both the quality assurance division and smart sensor division, Sean has a lot of responsibility, but he remains confident and optimistic. He said, “I have a great R&D team that supports smart sensor development while I focus on quality improvement. Some of my team members have been working with me for years. They know our goal and will meet my expectations. I'm both grateful and hopeful.” Sean emphasizes every step of development, test-runs and production to fulfill Delta's philosophy of “Doing Things Right the First Time”, while avoiding maintenance manpower and resource waste. With 23 years of effort and experience at Delta, Sean is leading his team to their goal of adding greater value to Delta's Industrial Automation.