Unlike the typical "batch" process for building harnesses, one-piece flow allows you to build small quantities efficiently and profitably, even a quantity as small as one. With batch processing you set up your wire processing equipment to run a large quantity of each different wire in the harness. These "batches" of wires are brought to the harness assembly area. A good process if you're building many of the same harness. But what if you deal in small quantities? One-piece flow may be the answer. With one-piece flow all wires for a single harness are processed at once. Labels can be applied for each wire so you have a complete "kit" of what you need to build a single harness.

When building harnesses that have individually labeled discrete wires it is not good enough to make sure that the harness is electrically correct. You must also make sure that the labels are correct. This is especially critical when building single-ended harnesses that get second-end terminated in the field. This type of harness building processes requires the assembly person to correctly identify each wire and install it in the proper specific location. Cirris offers a new feature in our easy-wire software called "Wire ID" that helps eliminate the human error factor associated with assuring that the labels match the wire location. This new feature gives the assembly person the tools needed to quickly identify which wire they are holding and where that particular wire should go in the connector of the harness they are assembling. In addition, the software offers the ability to have pictures and/or written instructions appear on the tester screen when a specific wire is identified. (for routing instructions or special handling details etc.)

Easy-wire software version 8.1 is required for the "Wire ID" feature.

Some of the advantages of using this approach in your assembly process are:

• Eliminates Wire Selection Errors by the Operator leading to electriclly correct, but wrongly labeled harnesses.
• Dramatically Improves Assembly Time.
• Facilitates "one-piece flow" assembly.
• Testing is part of assembly process, not a seperate step.

The easy-wire software lets you add labels to each wire instruction. Simply learn a standard wire list with your CR tester. Go to tab #4 "Define Instructions" and right click on the instruction line you want to add the label to. The 2nd software screen shot to the left show the window which will open.

You have 32 characters for your label. In this window you can also select the color of the wire you are now dealing with. You can also set different connection resistance levels for each wire.

The screen shot to the left shows what your test window looks like when you are in the testing mode. You can see that the label is listed as well as what the connection resistance parameter is for this particular instruction. In addition the wire color is displayed on the right