Tag Archives: Patty and the Professor

Patty and the Professor: What Homogeneous Means

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Folks,

Let’s see how Patty and Pete are doing with their Medical Device RoHS Crisis ….

Patty and Pete sat in a plane on the runway of the Manchester, NH, airport. Patty was just calming down after Jeff Sparkel  told her that Hal Lindsay had performed an analysis to show that the flagship medical device that Jeff’s factory assembled was RoHS-compliant using tin-lead solder. Corporate RoHS compliance was under her responsibility and she was panicking that ACME’s St. Paul site would miss the July 22, 2014 compliance date for medical devices. She literally drove straight to the airport after chatting with Sparkel on the phone. Fortunately, she and Pete both had a three-day suitcase in their offices for such emergencies. Rob’s mom agreed to help with her twin boys. What a blessing to have a mother-in-law like Rob’s mom.

To add to the stress, she and Pete almost missed the plane. He insisted that he needed to stop at a drug store, though he was secretive about the reason.

As the plane lifted off, Patty had to find out about this drug store mystery.

“OK, Pete. Why the drug store?” Patty asked.

“I’m afraid that, if I tell you, you’ll lecture me,” Pete said sheepishly.

“Out with it! Out with it,” Patty commanded.

“I bought Vick’s VapoRub to put under my nose when we are with Mr. Lindsay.  Ain’t no way I’m gonna’ be with that stink bomb unprepared,”  Pete responded.

Patty was going to say something but she started chuckling uncontrollably.

“You are welcome to share with me,” Pete offered.

As Patty tried to catch her breath, she just shook her head no.

They arrived at their hotel room at 10PM, after a quick, late dinner.

Fortunately, the timing of events was favorable. Lindsay had planned to give his final presentation the next day. Sparkel was actually pleased that Patty asked to attend.

Patty met Pete for breakfast at 7AM. By then she had run 5 miles, worked out with weights at the hotel gym, and showered. They arrived at Sparkel’s office at 7:45 and headed directly to the conference room where Lindsay was preparing to present. Upon seeing Patty and Pete, Hal Lindsay seemed surprised and turned a little red in the face.  Pete checked the room for ventilation.

Patty and Pete agreed to listen to Lindsay’s complete presentation without interruption.

“I know everyone here except for that guy in the back. He looks like a lawyer,” Pete whispered into Patty’s ear.

“He looks like a lawyer because he is one,” Patty responded. “He is my special guest,” she said.

Lindsay began his presentation sharply at 8AM. Patty had to admit that she was impressed with Lindsay’s experimental procedure. He had taken three of ACME’s St. Paul site’s highest-volume products and carefully performed teardown analyses. He painstakingly extracted all of the solder from the PCBs. One product weighed 10.2 kg and contained 11.2 grams of tin-lead eutectic solder. Patty checked Lindsay’s calculations. The fraction of lead in the unit was 0.042%, less than 0.1% that RoHS requires. All three products were below 0.05% by weight lead.

Lindsay then discussed his plan to analyze enough units to give the data statistical confidence. His charge would be an additional $20,000. Jeff Sparkel then asked if there were questions.

Patty raised her hand.

“Mr. Lindsay, what about RoHS’s requirement that all concentrations of substances of concern by ‘per homogeneous material?’ ” Patty asked.

Lindsay looked confused. His face turned a little red. It appeared that he didn’t understand what she was asking.

“Patty, please explain what ‘per homogeneous material’ means?” Sparkel asked.

“It means that any part of the product that could be mechanically separated must be less than 0.1% lead. As an example, a soldered joint can be cut out of a medical device with an X-Acto knife. Accordingly, the small piece of solder must be RoHS-compliant, so the solder itself must have less than 0.1% lead,” Patty explained.

“Per hemorrhoidgenous material, don’t apply to no medical devices,” Lindsay grumbled.

Both Patty and Pete had trouble not chuckling at Lindsay’s mispronunciation of “homogenous.”

“I beg to differ. Dr. Coleman’s explanation of ‘per homogenous material’ is spot on,” said Patty’s special guest.

Patty chuckled to herself when she realized that her guest thought she had a Ph.D.

“Who are you?” asked Jeff Sparkel.

“I’m Aaron Toynbee, Esq, our company’s general counsel. My department has responsibility for interpreting corporate compliance with environmental laws like RoHS.  We have studied the RoHS law extensively and the requirement for medical device compliance. Almost all of the medical devices we manufacture must meet RoHS compliance by July 22, 2014. I was alarmed when Dr. Coleman pointed out that there was some lack of understanding here about this.” Toynbee said.

After Toynbee spoke, it was agreed that the St. Paul team would work with Patty and Pete to resurrect the RoHS initiative that had been developed some time ago. Patty let out a deep sigh of relief.

Just as it appeared that the meeting was over, one of the younger engineers asked, “Are we still going to have Mr. Lindsay perform the analysis he suggested. It seems to me that there may be some benefit in getting this type of data.”

There appeared to be some murmuring of agreement. Hal Lindsay brightened, as it appeared that his proposed work might still be accepted.

Patty sat by watching this with incredulity. She remembered the Professor telling her that sometimes people will be too polite and not say what needs to be said. This was not going to be one of those times.

“You have got to be kidding me!” she shouted.  “There is no way we are going to continue any of this useless work!” she said even louder.

At this, Hal Lindsay’s  face turned beet red and he charged over to where Patty and Pete were. Out of the corner of her eye, Patty could see the Vick’s VapoRub gleaming under Pete’s nose.

Patty was now standing up and Lindsay had advanced to within five feet of her.

All of the sudden Lindsay came up to within a foot of Patty.

“It’s tree-huggers like you that that allowed this RoHS crap to happen in the first place,” he screamed into her face.

Patty was not prepared for this olfactory assault. Worse yet, some of Lindsay’s spittle ended up on her face. A natural gag reflex took over and she started having trouble breathing. Those in the meeting were horrified as they watched Patty crumble and slump to the floor.

Pete jumped up and instinctively and firmly pushed Lindsay back away from Patty. His Vick’s VapoRub doing its job. Sparkel’s  second-in-command, Jennifer Halliday, gently escorted Lindsay from the building, before any fisticuffs ensued.

Sparkel  and one of the female engineers helped Patty as she tried to get up. Within a few moments Patty was herself again. Everyone knew what happened, but when Patty said she probably should have eaten more for breakfast, everyone murmured in agreement.  Sparkel asked if just he, Patty, and Pete could wrap things up. Patty agreed, but asked to go to the ladies room first.

When she returned, Patty again reiterated that medical devices have to obey the “per homogeneous material” requirement and that the only way this was possible was to change to a lead-free solder. Patty and Pete confirmed their agreement to stay on for a few days to work with Sparkel’s team, to resurrect the plan to be RoHS-compliant by June 2014, a month early.

With two days of hard work, the plan was redeveloped, and Patty and Pete were confident the St. Paul team was on the right track. Jeff Sparkel apologized to Patty about 10 times.

Within no time Patty and Pete were back on the plane, heading home.

“Hey kiddo! You should receive hazardous duty pay for this one,” Pete teased.

“No kidding,” Patty responded.

“When you said you needed to go to the ladies room, I was a little worried,”  Pete said. “I thought maybe some permanent damage was done,” he went on.

“It was worse than that. I had to wash Lindsay’s spit off my face,” Patty groaned.

“Definitely Purple Heart material,”  Pete teased.

They both chuckled.

 

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

 

‘Per Homogeneous Material’ Also Applies to Medical Devices Under RoHS

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Folks,

It’s been awhile, let’s see what Patty is up to….

Patty was in her office, finishing lunch and reading Golf Digest. She was happy to see Tiger Woods doing better, but a little disappointed he didn’t do well in the PGA Championship. Like others, she was touched to see him holding his young son after a recent tournament.

Lost in thought, she was startled as Pete knocked on her door.

“Hey kiddo! Did you hear the latest?” Pete teased.

“OK. Go ahead and tell me. You always have the scoop,” Patty replied with a friendly chuckle. By now Patty was used to the fact that Pete always seemed to know what was going on before she did.

“Our plant in St. Paul, the one that assembles medical devices, is not going to have to convert to lead-free solder. So, nobody there is working on the transition,” Pete replied.

“They are too! As you remember, we had a lead-free and RoHS kick off meeting there in March. You were with me,” Patty shot back, a little annoyed.

“’Tis true. ‘Tis true. But, that was before Hal Lindsay hit the scene,” Pete said.

“How is that blowhard involved? Patty asked, her face turning red. Lindsay was an anti-RoHS curmudgeon who used to attend Boston area SMTA meetings. He and Patty had several heated discussions about RoHS while at these meetings. Lindsay was a physically big, intimidating man, and one of their encounters left Patty shaken. She remembered him screaming at her, “Its tree-huggers like you that allowed lead-free laws to get passed in the first place.”

“Well, the GM of the St. Paul plant has been convinced by ‘Halitosis Hal’ that they don’t need to do anything to comply with RoHS,” Pete continued.

Patty repeatedly warned Pete about using derogatory nicknames, but she forgot herself and chuckled a little bit. At one SMTA meeting, Hal’s breath was so bad that he stunk up the corner of the room in which he was sitting.

Patty composed herself, “Jeff Sparkel, is a great GM. How did Lindsay convince him it was possible to comply with RoHS and not switch to lead-free solder?” Patty asked.

“I think it has to do with ‘per homogeneous material,’” Pete replied. “I’ll have to talk to Jeff and see what is going on,” Patty stated. “Better do it soon,” Pete suggested, “Medical equipment RoHS compliance is less than a year away.”

As Pete left her office, she admonished him, “No more calling him “Halitosis Hal’,” but then she cracked up herself.

Jeff Sparkel was one of Patty’s favorite people. He was warm, engaging, hardworking, and reasonable to work with. However, he was more a businessman than an engineer. He had his MBA from Ivy University and knew The Professor.

Patty reached for her phone to give him a call. He picked up on the first ring.

“Hey Patty! What’s up? it’s great to hear from you,” Jeff said. Patty explained why she was calling, and the fact that she was alarmed at what Pete told her.

“That Lindsay is a piece of work, I’ll grant you that. But, he told us he can prove that we don’t need to go lead-free for only $10K. So we hired him,” Jeff said.

“What did you get for that?” Patty asked.

“He carefully took apart one of our medical office units that was scrapped. He extracted all of the solder and weighed it. He showed us that the weight of the solder was less than 0.05% of the weight of the unit. RoHS requires less than 0.1%, so we are golden. He wrote a report. Best $10K I ever spent. It was going to cost us more than $300K to convert to lead-free,” Sparkel summed up.

Patty had the worst sinking felling she had since she joined ACME Corp. Jeff’s business had to be RoHS compliant by July 22, 2014, and he had lost almost 6 months of prep time.

“Jeff, Yikes! Apparently no one on your team understands RoHS’s ‘per homogeneous material’ requirement” Patty exclaimed.

The was only silence on the other end of the phone.

What is, “per homogeneous material?” Is it important? Will Patty and Pete confront Hal Lindsay?

Stay tuned.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

First-Pass Yield, Continued

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Folks,

Let’s see how Patty is doing with her latest challenge …

Patty had decided to call The Professor and see what advice he had to offer in preparation for her visit to the facility in Sherbrooke, Quebec  that the senior management  of her company wanted to buy. She was having trouble understanding how it was possible to have 99.5% yield, great uptime, and balanced lines and still have poor profitability.  After a short discussion, The Professor seemed like he was ready to sum the situation up.

“Patty, I think you will find that the poor profitability is the result of high rework costs,” he said.

“But, Professor, how can that be when the first-pass yield is 99.5%? There is almost nothing to rework,” Patty replied.

The Professor chuckled, “Keep an open mind,” he advised.

Then he continued, “Don’t worry, you will figure it out in a heartbeat”.

Patty wished she could be so confident. As she was about to say good-bye, she mentioned to him her observations of so many teens being glued to their smartphones during her recent Williamsburg vacation. She also shared her concern for her two sons growing up in this over connected world.

“Patty, the main thing your sons have going for them is that they have you and Rob as parents. You will help steer them in the right direction, I’m sure. Remember to lighten up a little, after all they are only 5 years old,” The Professor chuckled.

As he was about to say good-bye, he thought of something else to share with Patty.

“Say Patty, you remember that, here at Ivy University, we have information sessions with high school students that are interesting in coming to our engineering school, right?” he asked.

Patty thought for a moment and remembered how impressive that was. It was the only university she knew of in which professors would meet with high school students and their families to discuss the benefits of an Ivy University engineering education.

“Sure, Professor, it’s a great thing Ivy U does,” Patty answered.

“Because of this program I have spoken to hundreds of high school students, I have also given presentations to high school students in larger groups. Give me a few moments with a high school student and I can tell if they are Ivy U material,” The Professor stated.

“How is that possible?” Patty asked.

“I look for two signs. The first is if their parents are much more interested than they are, that is a bad sign. The other is that if a high school student finds someone like me interesting, that’s a good sign,” The Professor chuckled and then continued.

“I know, to the typical 17 year old, I will seem like a boring nerd, however, to someone passionate about learning, I will likely be seen as a fecund resource, even if they are only 17,” he finished.

Patty chuckled a little herself, thinking that only The Professor, would use the term “fecund resource.”

Patty said farewell to her mentor and called Pete to make arrangements to leave for the Manchester, NH, airport, about an hour from their office in Exeter.

By the end of the day they were at their hotel in Sherbrooke. They had dinner at a French restaurant and both agreed to try and speak only French. Each of them slipped in a little Spanish inadvertently, a common problem among those who speak several Romance languages.

After a good night’s sleep, they met for breakfast. At breakfast they agreed on a few things:

  1. They would try and speak French at the meeting.
  2. They would discuss using preforms to solve the QFN voiding problem first as they expected this topic to be more controversial.
  3. The profitability problem, they would leave for last as they anticipated that this would take time, but were expecting less controversy.

After a short drive from the hotel, they were at the facility. Pete commented on the logical way that exits were numbered on Canadian highways, by the number of kilometers from a reference point.

As they approached the receptionist, Pete proclaimed, “Bonjour, comment ca va? Nous sommes là pour répondre à Jacques? (Hello, how are you? We are here to meet with Jacques.)

In a short time, Jacques appeared.

“Bonjour Jacques, mon nom est Patty et c’est Pete. Nous aimerions parler en français si c’est acceptable.” Patty cheerfully said. (Hello Jacques, my name is Patty and this is Pete.  We would like to speak in French if that is OK.)

“Ah, my friends, French probably won’t work for us. You speak with a Parisian accent, suggesting you learned European French. Our French has many different words, we almost always speak in English with our customers and partners from France,” Jacques responded.

Patty thought a minute and it made sense. Quebec has been separated from France for 250 years, but then it occurred to her that the US and Great Britain were separated for about the same amount of time. Maybe this is why some people say that the US and Britain are two cultures separated by a common language, she thought.

They went to a conference room and began discussing the QFN voiding issue.  Jacques presented his data and Patty and Pete gave a presentation on how solder preforms can minimize QFN voiding. Patty gave Jacques a copy of Seth Homer’s paper on the topic.  Both Pete and Patty were surprised at how receptive Jacques was to using preforms.  It seemed that this trip may be easier than they thought.

“Jacques, is it OK if Pete and I walk around and observe the manufacturing process for a while,” Patty asked.

“Sure, take a couple of hours and then we can go to lunch,” Jacques responded.

So Patty and Pete headed off to see the 3 SMT and through-hole assembly lines.  Upon entering the facility, they were stunned to see what appeared to be scores of rework operators.  Patty went over to observe more closely.  It appeared that right after the PCBs were assembled they were visually inspected.  Many of the boards went directly to a rework station.  The boards that appeared to pass the visual inspection, went to an in-circuit testing.  Most of these boards, also went to rework stations. The so-called first-pass yield was obviosuly measured after all of this repair work.

“Pete why don’t you check out the rest of the processes, I’ll stay here and see if I can get a true first-pass yield count,” Patty suggested.

So Pete went off to observe the other parts of the SMT and though hole processes and Patty stayed and counted boards to determine first-pass yield.  After a little more than an hour, they met  in the break room to sum up the situation.

“Well, for the hour I was there, 150 boards were assembled on the one line I was watching. The first-pass yield was only 24%,” Patty groaned.

“I can top that!” Pete replied.  “They have a pencil pusher,” he chuckled.

Patty choked on her ice tea.  As she recovered, she was able to say, “Just like in Mexico?”

“Yep! Same scenario,” Pete responded.

Several years ago, Patty and Pete were at a shop in Mexico, and observed an operator pushing a component, on a board that had exited a component placement machine, with a pencil.  The component was out of alignment and the operator was straightening it.  No one knew how to program the placement machines to correct for this error.

“Any other interesting phenomena?” Patty asked.

“They use the same paste and print parameters, no matter what the stencil. It’s no wonder their first pass yields are low,” Pete finished.

As they summed things up, they were a little down, as they recalled past adventures when they had to deliver bad news.  Patty, then had an idea.

“Pete, why don’t we offer to have you come here for a week or two to help them?” Patty asked.

“Sounds like fun,” Pete replied.

“But we have to get them to agree that first pass yield is measured as the boards come off the assembly line.  Without this metric they can’t assess where their processes need improvement,” Patty added thoughtfully.

“And we need to plot the defects on a Pareto Chart to develop a continuous improvement plan,” Pete commented.

Figure 1. A typical SMT Board assembly Pareto chart.

“It is amazing that their line balancing and uptime are so good,” Pete added.

They were both apprehensive as they met with Jacques.  They remembered some of the times that folks became hostile when bad news was delivered.

Patty did the best she could to keep it positive. She started with their strengths (uptime and line balancing) and complimented them on how strong these important metrics were.  She then shared their “opportunities for improvement” and offered Pete’s help.

“My friends, thank you. What a gracious offer.  I accept,” Jacques said gratefully.  “I guess the workshops I attended on uptime and line balancing paid off. They were presented by this interesting chap everyone calls The Professor,” he finished.

Patty and Pete were stunned by how well this trip went. They enjoyed a delicious French lunch at a café near the plant, with Jacques. On the trip home they chatted about how important it is to the measure first-pass yield before any rework is done, and to plot the defects in a Pareto Chart to lay the foundation for improving yields. Patty now understood what The Professor meant when he said, “look at the rework costs,” they were reworking before they measure their yields.

Epilogue:  Two months later true first pass yield was at 94%.  Costs plummeted with less rework and business soared. As a result of the increased business, full employment was maintained. Patty’s company did end up purchasing this facility. In addition, Patty and Pete became fast friends with Jacques.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

Note:  As always, this story is based on a true incident.

 

Pete Rides the Wave

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Let’s see how Pete is handling the wave solder crisis.

Pete had to admit that he was surprised by the positive outcome of his meeting with Fred Castle. He had sent Patty a text the day before, after he took the operators to lunch, before meeting Fred. The text was a little negative. So he was eager to send her the good news about the surprises in his two meetings with Fred since then. He was frustrated that he kept on getting her voice mail. Finally she answered.

“Advanced Processes,” Patty speaking.

“Hey, kiddo, it’s your favorite process genius!” Pete responded cheerfully.

“Oh, this must be Oscar Patterson!” Patty joked, and they both laughed. Patterson was an annoying chap they had to deal with a few years ago. He topped their list of most annoying people. Pete had almost come to fisticuffs with him.
“How is it going there?” Patty asked.

“Shockingly well. My meetings with Fred Castle were very productive,” Pete answered.

“Well, that is shockingly positive news. But I thought he said, ‘I’ve forgotten more about wave soldering than you’ll ever know,’” Patty responded.

“That’s the first thing he said to me when we shook hands, but he was clearly teasing. He slapped me on the back at the same time and chuckled. He went on to say that he had worked in wave soldering for over 30 years, typically at companies that had processes that were out of control. It was clear that he understood a lot about wave. We talked for 30 minutes about what makes a good wave process. As far as I could tell he was right on in everything he said. I think the operators didn’t pick up on his teasing, by the way,” Pete elaborated.

“What about special cause vs. common cause?” Patty queried.

“He didn’t have a clue,” Pete replied.

Patty was bracing herself. She was concerned that Pete might have insulted Castle.

“And you didn’t tell him he was an idiot?’ Patty teased.

“Patricia! I’m shocked you could even think such a thought,” Pete replied.

Pete went on, “We bonded, and he admitted that he was frustrated with the yield loss increasing. He was studying the situation and spending a lot of time trying to figure out the issues. He said he was having trouble sleeping. He mentioned that, in his last job, he was responsible for the wave processes at 10 locations. He was constantly fighting fires and got good at it. He had never worked at company that performed DoEs and developed optimized processes.”

“I’m dying to know how this situation worked out,” she interrupted.

“Patience, patience,” Pete admonished jokingly. He continued, ”It was clear that Fred likes to learn, so I mentioned that, recently, The Professor had mentioned the importance of understanding the differences between common cause and special cause variation when trouble shooting a process. I suggested that maybe studying these topics might help. So I gave him a few links to The Professor’s posts on common cause and special cause.” (Au:  If you are not familiar with common cause and special cause fails, it will be helpful understanding this story to read The Professor’s post.)

“What happened then?” Patty asked, the impatience in her voice apparent.

“Remember, this is now the end of my first day. I watched the process in the morning, took Molly and Chuck to lunch, and then met with Fred. On the second day I had a morning meeting with the quality director, Pam. Then Castle and I went to lunch,” Pete elaborated.

“And?” Patty asked impatiently.

“Castle was all excited. After studying common cause and special cause all night, he realized that he was seeing common cause fails in his detailed scrutiny of the wave line. By adjusting the process parameters slightly when he found a common cause fail, he was moving away from the optimized process settings that were determined by a DoE, so the failure rate got worse. In his previous job, he was mostly seeing special cause fails, as the processes were not optimized, so he was used to intervening,” Pete explained.

“It seems like he won’t have enough to do now,” Patty commented.

“I suggested he help quality. They are stretched thin and he is a detailed-oriented fellow. He keeps meticulous Pareto charts of the fails,” Pete said.

So, where are things now?’ Patty asked.

“Yesterday and today, first pass yields are at 96%. Fred also started helping quality today. It felt good to help and not offend,” Pete finished.

Patty thanked Pete for the great job he did and complimented him strongly for being successful and making friends at the same time. As she hung up the phone, she saw an email from Pam Olinski in her in box. It was a kind note thanking her and Pete for his help. It recounted much of what Pete had said.

She wistfully looked out her window. She was happy and grateful for all of her success, but, to be truthful, she missed the action of being out on the shop floor solving these types for problems.

She was jolted from her chair when she suddenly remembered it was her turn to take her twin sons to karate lessons. So she packed up quickly to pick them up at her mother-in-law’s, to get them to the gym by 5PM.

The Price-Profitability Paradox

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Let’s see how Patty and Pete are making out on their latest adventure….

“Here is the ProfitPro output,” Dave Ferris said as he pointed to a PowerPoint slide on the screen.

Just then, the site general manager, Sally Wilson, and the head of purchasing, Blaine Ellis, arrived.

“Long time no see,” Pete said to Ellis.

Ellis acknowledged Pete, but appeared to be in a foul mood. Everyone settled down and the meeting came to order. Patty was again surprised: Pete always seemed to know everybody.

After introductions, Sally kicked off the meeting.

“As you know, we have a new corporate award program for saving money. Dave is a candidate to win the first award.  But Blaine won’t sign off on it, because his solder paste expenses have, in his word, ‘skyrocketed,’ ” Sally started.

Ellis exclaimed, “My solder paste costs are through the roof. Last year we used 3,000 kilograms and this year we are using 3,100 kilograms and each kilogram costs $10 more. That’s more than $40,000 more. How is this saving money?”

“How has the overall site profitability changed?” Patty asked.

“It’s pretty consistent with what Dave’s PowerPoint slide shows,” Sally answered. “His result is for one of our six lines. We are using the new solder paste on all of the lines now and profitability is up about 8%, or more than $6 million for a year.”

“A lot of the added profit is from cost savings that purchasing has implemented,” Blaine shot in.

“You don’t realize the pressure I am under to reduce the cost of purchased goods. Components, PWBs, connectors, solder paste, flux, packaging, etc., is over 80% of all of our total cost. Corporate has been all over me because of the increase in solder paste cost,” Ellis went on in frustration.

“Part of the increased cost of solder paste is because we ship more product, we actually use less paste per board with the new paste,” Dave responded.

“How so?” asked Sally.

“The old paste had poor response to pause. If we stopped the line for a few minutes, the first one or two prints afterward would be poor because the paste stiffened up. We would have to wipe the paste off those boards and reprint them. This would happen a couple of times per day. The ProfitPro output shows the increased productivity and profitability for the line for which I am responsible. Note that the profits are up $841K!” Dave Ferris went on.

“But my purchasing expenses have gone through the roof!” Blaine Ellis blurted as he stormed out of the room.

Patty, Pete, Dave, and Sally, sat there dumbfounded, looking at each other.

Pete finally spoke up, “Let me go talk to Blaine,” he said as he left the room.

“One of the issues is that Mr. Ellis should not be criticized if a consumable costs more money if it increases profitability. That doesn’t make sense,” Patty said.

“I agree” said Sally. “But much of the pressure comes from ‘Corporate.’”

As Sally was speaking, it occurred to Patty, that, in her new role, she may be able to impact this ineffective corporate policy. As she was mulling over this thought, Pete and Blaine Ellis returned to the room.

Ellis spoke first.

“After discussing the situation with Pete, it occurs to me that young Ferris’ profitability argument may have merit,” Ellis started.

“But Dr. Coleman, I need your help,” Ellis implored.

At this Patty’s ears perked up. She was not used to being called by her last name nor was she aware that she had a Ph.D.!

“I think I know what you need,” Patty responded. “We need to change the corporate criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of purchasing, to include situations like this. I’m quite sure I can do it,” Patty finished cheerfully.

The meeting concluded with all agreeing that Dave Ferris should be given the corporate award and Patty reaffirming her commitment to change the corporate policy.

In several hours, Patty and Pete were on an airplane heading home.

“OK, out with it,” Patty teased Pete.

“What?” was Pete’s sheepish reply.

“How did you know Blaine?” Patty asked.

“Remember, when I told you that I tried out for Olympic volleyball years ago?” Pete responded.

“Yes, ” Patty replied.

“So did Blaine. I’m not sure which one of us was more humbled by the experience,” Pete chuckled.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

Rating World-Class Productivity

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Folks,

The impetus for writing the Patty and the Professor series came from my observations that many assemblers were not very focused on productivity. Productivity seemed to be an afterthought. Since then little has changed. This conclusion seems astounding, since all assemblers are in business to make a profit.

In light of this situation, I have developed 10 questions, valued at 10 points each, to help assemblers assess their profitability potential. If you work for a printed circuit board assembler, take this quiz and see how you rate:

  1. Although quality may be job 1, our company has a strong focus on productivity. At all levels everyone understands that, when the line is down, we are not making money.
  2. We have a practice, understood by all, that if a line is down more than a specified amount of amount time, the line down situation is escalated through the management chain.
  3. All of our operators, technicians, and engineers have been trained in procedures to assure the minimum amount of downtime.
  4. We measure and graph our line uptime and other productivity metrics.  Everyone knows the approximate value of these metrics.
  5. Our component placement machines are time balanced.
  6. We use feeder racks and other preparation devices to prepare for the next job while the current job(s) are running.
  7. A major consideration in the purchase of our assembly equipment is its effect on productivity, not the equipment’s cost alone.
  8. A major consideration in the purchase of our assembly materials, such as solder paste, is its effect on productivity (e.g. poor paste response to pause would be a strong rejection criteria,) not the material’s cost alone.
  9. We us productivity and cost metrics, such as non-material assembly per I/O assembled (NMAC/I/O), to track our performance.
  10. We understand that sometimes an added expense, such as solder preforms, can actually reduce the total cost and increase productivity and profitability.

Ratings:

  • World Class: ? 90
  • Above Average: 75 – 89
  • Average:  55 – 74
  • Below Average: < 55

How did you do?  Let me know what you think. We hope to have this online soon.

Best Wishes,

Dr. Ron