There’s not much that’s bolted down to the floor of the 40,000-square-foot factory in Seattle’s SoDo district where First Mode plans to build powertrain conversion kits for mining trucks — and that’s by design.
“The factory itself represents the latest in smart manufacturing,” First Mode CEO Julian Soles said during today’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in attendance. “It’s ‘software-defined’ rather than a hard-point-constrained facility. Nearly every component’s shelf and assembly sequence is digitized for maximum speed and data management.”
If the production requirements change, the floor plan can change accordingly. First Mode is also taking advantage of digital tools for tracking the supply chain.
“Every workstation, every inventory location, every product that moves through the facility is equipped with a bar code and has a digital twin,” Philipp Nonnast, senior global supply manager for First Mode, explained during a factory tour.
Display screens that have been hung above the shop floor track the flow of hardware through the production line, and flag bottlenecks as they arise.
