Tag Archives: Ron Lasky

In Search of a Problem to Solve

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It has been a while, let’s look in on Patty …

Patty had to admit that she was very fortunate. She had yet to turn 30 and she was a Senior Vice President at ACME.  There was even a small article about her in Fortune magazine. But she had to admit that, at some level, she was bored. She missed the action of being out on the line and solving problems.

With these thoughts she headed toward the lunch room. She had avoided eating lunch with the execs and still ate lunch with the young engineers that were her age. No one thought it strange. Pete was occasionally the old-timer in the group, as he was approaching 45 years old.

As she sat at lunch with her friends, Patty also had to admit that she was jealous of all of the group’s talk about solving technical problems. She was now responsible for corporate strategies and seldom got her “hands dirty.” So she missed the technical challenges on the shop floor.

After lunch she stopped Pete.

“Hey, Pete, could you stop by my office?” Patty asked.

“Kiddo, for you anything … even that,” he answered and they both chuckled.

As Pete sat down in Patty’s office, she asked him, “How do you like your new job?”

“What’s not to like? Twice as much money and working with you!” Pete answered.

“But don’t you miss … ,” Patty stopped and struggled to gain her composure.

Peter helped her, “Working on the shop floor solving process problems?”

“Yes, so much so that I could almost cry,” Pete finished.

They were silent for awhile.

Then Pete suggested, “Why don’t I see if I can find us a problem.”

Patty smiled. Pete was always well connected.

A few days passed and Patty had just about forgotten about their meeting. There was a knock on her door and Pete stuck his head in.

“Hey kiddo, we have an assignment,” Pete shouted cheerfully.

Patty perked right up.

“What’s the scoop?” she asked.

“You know the new program that rewards cost savings?” Pete asked.

“Sure, I think it is a great idea,” Patty responded.

“There is a conflict in our plant in Santa Clara. Management wants to give a $10,000 reward and the senior purchase manager is blocking it,” Pete elaborated.

“Why?’ Patty asked.

“The engineer deserving of the reward purchased a solder paste that improved uptime,” Pete said.

“Sounds great, what is the issue?” Patty asked. “Let me guess. The better solder paste costs more?” she asked.

“Yep!” Pete responded, “One penny per gram.”

“Mike Madigan wants someone to negotiate the situation. Why not us?” Pete asked.

Patty quickly sent Mike an email offering to help. He gave her the go ahead shortly thereafter.

In a matter of days the arrangements were made and Patty and Pete were on a jet from Boston’s Logan Airport to San Jose, California.

Their flight had taken off and they were enjoying a snack, when Pete commented, “Let’s hope we don’t find someone there like the guy who wanted to assemble the boards without the boards,” Pete chuckled.

At this comment, Patty almost choked on her sparkling water. About four years ago, when Patty was just starting out, they were working on a critical project. The manager in charge wanted the boards to be assembled on a certain date.  Unfortunately, the PWBs did not arrive on time, even though all other components, connectors, and the other hardware where ready. The manager, in frustration, came out to the line on the scheduled start date and was furious that the boards were not being assembled.

The manager asked the lead engineer, “Why aren’t the boards being assembled?”

The lead engineer responded, “The PWBs did not arrive from the vendor.”

To this the manager responded, “Aren’t you going to assemble them anyway?” (See note below.*)

This was their favorite story about the occasional comedy in electronics assembly.

It seemed like no time at all and Patty and Pete were sitting in the conference room that had been reserved for the meeting. They introduced themselves to a young engineer who was sitting in the room waiting for the meeting to start. His name was Dave Ferris.

“So Dave, you are the cause of this meeting, eh?” Pete teased.

“I guess so. I can’t believe how hard it is to sell productivity here. The amount of time the new solder paste saves enables us to produce 1,000 more units per year on each line. And these boards are super expensive, with high margins. Admittedly the solder paste costs $0.01 more per gram, but the additional profit is over $800,000 per year for each of our three lines,” Dave Ferris explained.

“How did you perform the calculations,” Patty asked.

“I went to a workshop run by this quirky, cheerful guy everyone calls ‘The Professor.’ He was amazing,” Ferris replied.

Pete and Patty both chuckled.

“We know The Professor well,” they chimed in unison.

“We assume you used ProfitPro for the calculations?” Pete asked.

“Yes,” Dave responded with a surprise in his voice that they would know about such things.

Will Patty and Pete save the day?  Will Dave get his award?  Stay tuned to see.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

*As hard as it is to believe, the story about building the boards without the PWBs is true.  Thanks to ITM.

Is the Time Right for Solderless Assembly?

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Folks,

Apex 2010 appeared to be a great success. Attendance was high and my “Lead-Free Assembly” workshop broke a personal record of about 60 attendees.

While at the show, I was invited to a meeting on solderless assembly, ably organized by Phil Marcoux. About 15 people were at the meeting. The intent was to crystallize what is needed to make solderless technology a reality. Many have suggested that solderless assembly’s time is now. The main reason being the challenges of lead-free solder-based assembly and its perceived lack of reliability. Some believe that solderless technology is a next logical step in assembly on the order of importance of the advent of SMT assembly.

I was well-behaved at the meeting (I am a something of a renowned skeptic of solderless assembly), but pointed out, early on, that any solderless assembly technique (the Occam process a likely contender), must be disassemble-able to meet the requirements of WEEE.

Much spirited but pleasant discussion transpired related to what is needed to make this technology a reality. Several folks mentioned that a “killer app” would be needed to kick-start solderless assembly, and supply the considerable monies needed.

Finally, near the end of the meeting, Phil, suggesting I had been too quiet, and asked me to chime in. I said that I agreed that a killer app was needed, and proceeded to tell a story. It went as such:

Let’s say it was several years ago and Steve Jobs heard about solderless technology. He was wondering if it might be right for Apple’s future killer app, the iPad. So we are invited to visit him on Infinity Drive. After confidentially agreements are signed, he starts speaking. He proceeds to tell us that the BOM for the entry level iPad is $250 and assembly adds $9. Reliability of lead-free products has been equal to, or better than, leaded products and lead-free enables finer PWB lead spacings than does leaded solder. So he is not unhappy with lead-free assembly, but would like to do solderless technology, if it makes sense. The assembled cost has to be less than the $259 and solderless reliability must be better. We would need to be ready for an April 2010 launch.

I think the cost metrics in this scenario would be difficult for a solderless technology to compete with. And, even if the price was a few dollars less, what is the compelling reason to change?

SMT arrived because through-hole technology could not meet the miniaturization requirements of modern electronics. We could not have modern electronics without SMT. What are the compelling reasons solderless technology should be used in an application like the one discussed above? The answer still escapes me.

Cheers,
Dr. Ron

Put Brakes on EMI ‘Conclusions’

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I know and respect the team at Circuitnet, but it seems like they made a pretty serious goof the other today.  Their top story  had headlines stating, “Tin Whiskers Behind Toyota Recall.”  The link to this story takes us an article with the title “Electronic Tin Whiskers may be behind Toyota recalls.”

So we start with a headline telling us that tin whiskers are behind the recall and when we go to the main article we see that tin whiskers may be behind the recalls.  The person that the article is quoting is Keith Armstrong an EMI (electromagnetic interference) expert.  In this article Armstrong states that EMI may be the culprit in Toyota brake malfunction.

From what I see in the article, Armstrong has no data, and has not looked at a failed Toyota brake system.  He is just arguing that EMI may be the culprit.  Who knows?

Armstrong is then quoted as saying that tin whiskers, in the lead-free solder, may be to blame for the recalls and he then references work by John Barnes.  Barnes’ exhaustive summary has nothing to say about tin whiskers in Toyota braking systems, just a bit about tin whiskers in general in the over 1,000 pages about lead-free issues.  Armstrong is then quoted as saying that the tin whisker problem, “has caused serious problems in the computer industry previously.”  The article at this link is dated Nov. 12, 2002, and is simply a call for papers on tin whiskers at a conference.  Strong suggestions for having no data!

I don’t want to minimize the concern for tin whiskers, but the headline in Circuitnet and the article it links to have nothing factual to do with tin whiskers in the Toyota recall situation.  Given the seriousness of this situation, this misleading reporting is troubling indeed.

Cheers,
Dr. Ron

P.S.: One commenter to the main article points out that Toyota uses leaded solder in the brake electronics.  I don’t know if this is true, but given the RoHS exemption that auto electronics has for lead, it would not surprise me.

In summary: Double yikes!!

The End of Cleaning

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Patty was eating her lunch at her desk while reading Golf Digest. She had been training with weights, performing stretches and getting lessons from a long drive pro in Grantham, NH. It was at 90-minute commute, but it was worth it. The sophisticated machines that the golf center there indicated that her average drive was up from 250 to 268 yards. Still way short of Rob’s 294, but she was making progress!

Patty was kind of depressed as she read; the Tiger Woods scandal had her in a funk. Her feelings were summed up by another person, who suggested they were in a state of mourning. Her mind was drifting when she was startled by Pete’s knock at the door.

“Hey kiddo, pack your bags looks like another trip,” Pete cheerfully announced.

Pete, how is it that you always know what’s going on before I do? I’m supposed to be the manager,” she teased.

“Somes got it, somes ain’t,” he quickly shot back.

They both chuckled. Patty and Pete made a good team. He was well-connected and knew what was going on. Through Patty and the Professor, Pete was encouraged to go to night school to get his degree and was always trying to learn things from both of them. Through Pete’s “knowing the ropes,” he was a wise counselor to Patty on the realities of getting things done. They both helped each other immensely and they both knew it.

“So, what’s the scoop?” Patty asked.

“Well, remember our parent company bought out a privately held company in Virginia a month or so ago, right?” Pete responded.

“Sure,” said Patty.

“Senior management went on a tour and concluded that the place is a mess. They are going to ask us to perform an audit and develop an improvement action plan,” Pete went on. “Bring your golf clubs; the courses are open down there.”

Patty went into her office and checked her email. Sure enough, there was a dispatch from the site GM telling her to see him about a trip to the new facility in Virginia. Patty went to see him and received very broad instructions.

“That place looks like a pig sty in a swamp. Go do your magic and give us a plan to fix it up. Oh, and by the way, the former owner has stayed on as the site’s GM. Ahh … ahh, he is a little rough around the edges … thought I’d give you a heads up,” the GM shared.

The trip was a breeze and Patty did bring her clubs. She and Pete decided to wean themselves from The Professor on this one. As they arrived they met John Davis, the operations manager. John seemed pleasant but serious, and a little subdued, almost like a puppy that had been kicked too many times. He also didn’t make eye contact when he talked.

As they walked out into the shop floor, Patty was aghast. Not only was the floor disorganized but it was filthy. As she walked toward one of the reflow ovens it almost looked like tinsel was hanging from the ceiling. She couldn’t figure out what it was.

“John, what is that hanging from the ceiling above the reflow oven?” Patty inquired.

John was taken aback, as if he never noticed the hanging material.

Patty pointed and said again, “This stuff.”

“You know, I never paid much attention. I’m not sure what it is,” he finished.

As they approached the reflow oven, they could see sticky material hanging from the ceiling like stalactites.

The trio studied it and suddenly Pete exclaimed, “It’s flux dripping from the ceiling with cobwebs hanging on it.”

“How is this possible? Aren’t the flux condensation and cob webs cleaned up during routine cleaning?” asked Patty incredulously.

“We don’t ever clean,” sighed John.

Patty and Pete were speechless.

“How can you never clean?”, asked a stunned Pete.

Our GM, Oscar Patterson, says cleaning is a waste of money.

Neither Patty or Pete know what to say.

Patty and Pete, accompanied by John, continued their audit over the next few days. They were pleasantly surprised to see that uptime was a respectable 25%. They got to know John a little and, on the third day of their visit, were surprised to see that he was more dour than the past two days.

“John, what’s up?” asked Pete.

“It’s hard not to be discouraged,” said John.

“How so?”, Inquired Patty.

“Well, Mr. Patterson went to SMTAI and heard a paper in which the speaker said that it has never been shown that nitrogen in the reflow process improves quality and reliability. In addition, he heard that nitrogen makes tombstoning worse,” replied John forlornly.

“Well that’s true, in surface mount assembly.” replied Pete and Patty in unison.

“But Mr. Patterson turned the nitrogen off on our wave soldering machines. He didn’t even tell me,” moaned John.

“Yikes!” exclaimed Patty.

“Looks like the Big O struck again,” Pete chimed in.

Patty was going to respond to Pete’s comment, but she thought she would wait until they were alone.

Patty then commented, “A good solder paste should not need nitrogen in reflow, but nitrogen almost always helps in wave soldering. Did Mr. Patterson perform any experiments to show that acceptable yields could be obtained without using nitrogen in the wave machines?”

“No,” replied John, “he just canceled the blanket PO for nitrogen and was beaming when he announced at a staff meeting that by not using nitrogen we save $10,000 a month.”

“Didn’t anyone ‘push’ back?” Patty asked.

“You don’t know Mr. Patterson, Patty,” John replied.

“You mean the Big O,” Pete interjected.

Patty glared at Pete.

Patty then asked, “It’s almost quitting time. Have you got a few scrap boards and a cylinder of nitrogen?”

“Yes, I think so,” said John, “We certainly have scrap boards and I have a few cylinders of nitrogen we use for other purposes.”

Patty then suggested that they perform an experiment. Fortunately, Patty and Pete now bring a camera and video camera with them, so Pete was assigned to video the proceedings. Patty ran a few scrap boards through the wave soldering machine with no flux or nitrogen. The boards looked hilarious when they came out of the wave, they had huge stalactites on the bottom. The 4” x 6” boards must have had a pound or two of solder on the bottom. Pete was laughing so hard that he couldn’t hold the camera steady. Even John cracked a smile.

“Kiddo,” where did you learn that?” Pete asked. “I’ve been around a long time and this board takes the cake.”

“I took some training from the folks at Speedline and we did this in a class,” answered Patty. “But wait, the best is yet to come.”

She then asked John to turn on the nitrogen and they ran the same board through, still with no flux. The board came out of the wave looking fine. John inspected it.

“It looks like it could be shipped,” John said with amazement.

“Absolutely amazing,” added Pete.

“That’s why nitrogen is important in wave soldering,” Patty summed up.

“It is possible for a robust flux to get excellent yields in wave without nitrogen, but a DoE should be performed to verify this hypothesis,” Patty added.

As they left the building for the day, Patty admonished Pete. “I told you to behave. What is this ‘The Big O’?”

“I spent a little time getting to know the operators. Everyone calls Oscar Peterson the “Big O” behind his back. He is 6’4, 380 pounds. The word is he is a real dictator; it’s his way or the highway. He is also a miser, always looking to cut costs. The operators clean the restrooms and make the place as look good as they can by cleaning during their breaks.” Pete summed up.

Will Patty and Pete confront the Big O? How will it go? Is nitrogen in the wave really that important?

How are the plans for Patty’s wedding going?

Stay tuned for the latest.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

Note: It may be hard to believe, but I witnessed both the end of all cleaning at a facility and the end of using nitrogen in wave soldering at the same assembly facility of a large (>$10 billion) company. So, this story is based on fact.

An Interview with Patty

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Folks,

While at SMTAI a few weeks ago, I ran into Patty. She agreed to sit down for an interview. Here it is.

Dr. Ron (DR): Patty, it’s great to see you here at SMTAI. Congratulations on your promotion and many accomplishments over the past year.

Patty: Thanks. BTW, I really enjoyed your talk, “SMT: The Next Twenty-Five Years.” Was there really a song, when the transistor radio came out, called “Transistor Sister?”

DR: Absolutely! “Transistor Sister” was a part of my youth. It was sung by Freddy Cannon in 1961.

Patty, a number of folks wrote in saying that they liked my blog postings about you, but they felt that the stories couldn’t possibly be true in a modern electronic assembly company.  Can you enlighten us?

Patty: Yes, I saw those comments. All the blog postings have been real case studies; if anything, they are understated. The Professor claims that 10 to 15 years ago, when profit margins were higher and OEMs did much of their own assembly, assembly optimization was viewed as a science and assembly was orchestrated more like a ballet. Process discipline existed. As assembly left the OEMs and profit margins decreased, there was little money for assembly process optimization analysis. Electronic assembly entered the era of “hockey” management. Much of assembly became disorganized and subject to “the tyranny of the urgent.”

DR: So I gather your point would be that right when we need process science the most, we aren’t investing in it?

Patty: Process science would be nice, but I’m convinced if management just had a sense of urgency about line uptime and productivity it would make a world of difference.

DR: “Hockey Management?” “Tyranny of the Urgent?”

Patty: “Hockey Management” is a term developed by Phil Crosby in his book, Quality is Free. He tells us that electronics assembly should be orchestrated like a ballet. Everything is planned ahead, we know where the stencil is for the next job, the parts are on the feeder racks or at least the reels are ready, etc. This is “Ballet Management” (everything organized.) An example of Hockey Management would be a case where the team has lined up the next job, all set up is complete … management calls and tells the team to run another job … 6 hours is lost. In an assembly line, that is a loss of at least $15,000-$75,000 of product. Profit lost, never to be found again.

DR: “Tyranny of the Urgent?”

Patty: You are so busy doing what is urgent (i.e., switching the job that lost 6 production hours) that you never do what is important (i.e., setting up a system that minimizes such job switching.) By the way, as you can imagine, I learned all of this stuff from The Professor.

DR: He’s an interesting guy. I know him a little, I’ve seen him a few times when I visited Ivy University. Give us your perspective.

Patty: In addition to being super smart, he is very kind. But, I have to admit that traveling with him is a little stressful.

DR: How so?

Patty: Well, in addition to being smart, he is strongly convinced that it is important to be able to perform calculations in your head. He claims that if Fred [see “Saving a House, Losing a Mansion”], could do this and practiced it, he would have known instinctively that the solder paste that “Saved a House” was “Losing a Mansion.” His first thought would have been to estimate what the minutes of downtime, caused by the cheaper paste, cost.

DR: I’m still not sure I understand why traveling with The Professor stressful?

Patty: Oh yeah, I forgot. He wants to make sure I am an “ace” at doing math in my head. He is always giving me problems to calculate when we travel. It can be a little stressful when he is disappointed when I don’t know something or can’t perform the calculation.

DR: Can you give us an example?

Patty: On our last trip he asked me to calculate the amount of times the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia would fill Cayuga Lake. He gave me the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia as about 300 billion barrels and the dimensions of Cayuga Lake as approximately 50 miles long, 2 miles wide and 200 feet deep. You should have seen the look in his eyes when I told him that I didn’t know that there were 40 gallons in a barrel and one cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 pounds. Knowing this and the fact that a gallon of water is 8 lbs., you can calculate that a cubic foot is about 8 gallons, hence a barrel is about 5 cubic feet. He thinks that everyone knows things like this that; of course, they don’t really know.  How many square feet per acre, how many acres in a square mile, yada, yada, yada? But he means well.

DR: Well we should probably go back to the conference. Can you close by giving us a summary of the key things to do to improve productivity?

Patty: Sure, in order of importance:

1.       Measure line uptime

a.       Set continuous improvement goals for line uptime

b.      Have a plan to reduce downtime, especially for changeovers and line assists

2.       Use the best-performing materials (solder paste, underfill, flux, prefroms, etc.) and supplies (stencils, squeegees, etc.).

a.       Remember the lessons in “Saving a House, Losing a Mansion), the best performing materials and supplies are always the cheapest.

3.       Have a “Line Down Management Escalation Plan.”

a.       Senior management should be alerted if the line is down for an unplanned reason for more than 30 minutes.

4.       Ensure that your lines are time balanced.

There are a few more points we can discuss at another time, but these are likely the most important. Oh, and all of Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves would fill Cayuga Lake 2 to 3 times!

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

Saving a House, Losing a Mansion

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Patty and The Professor agreed to work with two of the local process engineers to develop a plan of attack to try and find the lost productivity.

Patty spoke first. “It’s tempting to look just at the new solder paste, but this approach wouldn’t be thorough.”

The Professor and the two process engineers, Joe and Ann, agreed. So they went ahead and developed a thorough productivity assessment plan, including uptime and line balancing measurements and evaluating changeover and assist times. Ann pointed out that one of the five lines was still using the old paste. All agreed that this situation was good news as they would have a new paste to old paste comparison. It was already lunch time and everyone was hungry, so off they went to a local Outback. While riding in the car, Patty’s cellphone rang. It was Rob.

“Hey Patty,” Rob cheerfully started. “Guess what I shot last night at the Golf Club of New England — a four under par 68! The pro told me it was the best round this year at the course from the back tees.”

“Rob, that’s great!” Patty cheerfully responded. Truth be told, she was really happy for Rob. He was the No. 2 golfer on the men’s team at Tech a few years ago as a senior. She was a junior then and was the best women golfer in Tech’s history. The few times they played then, she beat him. Ever since her dinner date, after their success at AJAX, they had been a couple. At the time she had been thinking of breaking up with Jason and Rob’s invite to dinner was all the catalyst that she needed. In the past year or so, Jason would just watch sports on TV and drink beer. He didn’t have a fitness program or a real plan for his life. Rob was so much different. He worked out, mostly to improve his golf game and he was getting a master’s degree part time.

After they started dating, Rob and Patty played golf together with some other guy friends from Tech. She usually shot the low score, but the three other guys were longer off the tee than she was. Her superior iron play and short game made the difference.

At lunch this working foursome talked about the audit they were about to perform.

“There is one comical thing we should tell you before we start,” Joe said with a twinkle in his eye. “I’ts about the ‘Saving a House Program.’ ”

At that, Ann started laughing and inadvertently started choking on her “sweet tea.” Patty was about to perform the Heimlich maneuver when Ann revived.

With Ann still red in the face and laughing, The Professor requested, “Yes, please tell us.”

Joe chimed in, “So that Ann doesn’t choke to death, let me take a stab at it. The new cheaper solder paste has not been very popular and has generated many complaints. The new COO, Fred, decided he had to do something. He estimated that the new paste saves $100,000 a year on all five lines; that’s about what a modest house costs locally. So he tells all of the complainers that using the new paste saves enough money in a year to buy a new house. He even found a house for sale on the internet for $100,000 and had posters of it made with the saying: ‘Saving Enough for a House.’ It worked; people stopped complaining.”

“Joe, can you tell us what some of the complaints were about the solder paste?” asked The Professor.

“Well, for one thing, it is stiff coming out of the tubes or jars, we have to knead it or it won’t print,” Joe responded.

“Hmm,” both Patty and The Professor mused.

“Also, if we stop a line for a few minutes the paste stiffens up and we have to perform some dummy prints to kneed it,” chimed in Ann. “Sometimes even after this, the first print has to be discarded due to poor hole fill. It wastes time and solder paste.”

“Don’t forget the smell,” Joe teased.

At that, Ann just about spit up her sweet tea.

“The new paste literally stinks,” Joe added. “Fortunately, the vendor added some perfume recently.”

“What about reliability of the finished product?” The Professor asked evenly.

“That’s what is surprising. It’s as good as the old paste.” Ann replied. “We performed some tests and asked around, the reliability is very good.”

“A pleasant surprise indeed,” The Professor said.

The little group finished lunch and headed back to get to work on the audit. Ann and Patty and Joe and The Professor formed teams and went off to the factory. They performed detailed analysis of changeover times, assist times, line balancing, uptime, etc., on the four lines using the new solder paste and the one line using the old solder paste.

As Patty approached one of the lines she saw a cheerful looking gent about 45 years old replenishing the solder on one of the stencil printers. Ann introduced her to Wilbur and asked if it was OK for Patty to ask him some questions.

“Darlin,” he said to Ann in his backwoods drawl, “Anything you gorgeous gals want to ask me is jus fine.”

“How does replenishing the new paste compare to the old paste?” Patty asked.

“Well, it takes a lot longer, stirring the paste and all, but to “Save a House” I’m willing to put up with it, sighed Wilbur.

After a day-and-a-half of work, the team reassembled. The Professor suggested that Patty lead the discussion. Many calculations and comparisons were performed, finally after several hours they were ready to meet with Fred Perkins and Jane Wilson. Patty agreed to speak.

Patty, addressed the small gathering. She presented the approach they used to collect data, their analysis techniques and the fact that they had reached a consensus. The evidence, she said, is persuasive that:
1. The site productivity is down about 8%, which will reduce profits about 12%.
2. The main culprit appears to be the new solder paste.

At this Fred slammed his fist on the disk. His face a bright crimson, he shouted at Patty, “Liar, you corporate types are all alike! You come here from your Ivory Tower and tell us how to assemble a product. You have never had to meet a payroll and make a profit in your life. I’ve been out on the line. It only takes two or three minutes longer per changeover with the new paste and replenish times are even less.”

At these comments Jane rolled her eyes and glared at Fred. It was clear she wasn’t intimidated by him.
Patty shot back, “Fred you are correct; let’s look at the numbers. We measured your average uptime at about 25%, which is quite good. That means the lines are running two hours in an eight hour shift or 120 minutes. Eight percent of 120 minutes is about ten minutes a day. A typical line has two changeovers a day each requiring 2 extra minutes and 6 solder paste replenishments ,taking an extra 1 minute each with the new paste. This totals 10 minutes, hence cuts production by 8%.”

Fred screamed back, “This is mathematical gobblygook. I saved the company $100,000 a year.” At this he stormed out of the room.

The remaining folks stared at each other. Finally Jane broke the silence, “It never occurred to me how precious a few minutes here and there can affect profit. With the new paste, we will lose about 12% of our total profit of $10 million, or $1.2 million per year. It appears that while Fred was ‘saving a house,’ we were ‘losing a mansion.’ ”

Epilogue: Three weeks later Fred was “promoted” to corporate compliance officer. Jane became the new site CEO/COO. The old solder paste was reinstated a day after Fred left. A few of the old-timers kept some of the “Saving a House” posters for future reminiscing.

‘Paste is Paste’: The Professor Hits the Road

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Patty was staring out the window of her new office. She had just been made manager of a new department responsible for corporate wide productivity and advanced processes. At 25 years old, she was the youngest manager at ACME by six years. She was surprised that Pete was one of the folks in the new department and was concerned that Pete might have trouble accepting her as his boss.

When Patty mentioned her concern, Pete replied, “Hey ‘kid,’ are you joking? I’m thrilled to be in your department. Not only is the work the most interesting, but you are one of the few managers that really knows what they’re doing.”

Considering that Pete was Patty’s father’s age, this vote of confidence meant a lot.

The view out of her office window was terrific. She could see some of the local hills in Southern New Hampshire and the fall color change was striking.  A few coworkers claimed that on a clear day you could just see the top of Mount Monadnock. Patty had made some calculations using the position of her office, the distance and height of the local hills and had proven to herself that “the most-climbed mountain in the US” was 100 meters to short to be seen from her window. But the sky was so clear she couldn’t help by strain her eyes to see it she could get a glimpse of that majestic beak. Her pleasant interlude was jarred by the rude, demanding ringing of her office phone.

“Advanced Processes, Patty speaking,” she cheerfully spoke into the phone.

“Patty, it’s Sam. Can you come to my office now?” the voice on the other end spoke to her.

It was Sam Watkins, the site GM, and his call now did not make her nervous. Ever since the first visit of The Professor, Sam had treated her like a valued member of the team. It was his suggestion to launch a corporate center of competence for productivity and advanced processes and name Patty the manager. When he gave her the job, he said that a lot of the work would be corporate troubleshooting. She expected that Sam’s call related to this topic.

When she entered his office, Sam got right to the point. “Patty, there’s a crisis in our plant in Columbia, SC. A new COO took over four months ago and went on a cost-cutting spree. Since then, the plant’s profit is down 8%. We can’t figure out why. Go there and find out what’s going on. And develop a plan to fix it,” he ordered.

Patty excitedly returned to her office. She called Pete in and they discussed plans for their trip. Patty was trying to limit her use of The Professor, but this assignment seemed to beg for his participation.  His uptime improvement recommendations so impressed management, he was now on a permanent consulting retainer.

As Sam said, “Every time The Professor visits one of our facilities, they make several more million dollars a year. I wish he lived here!”

Patty made a call to The Professor and to her surprise he was available. They agreed to meet at the Columbia airport at noon in two days.

The time passed quickly and before she knew it she was in a rental car driving to the ACME facility in Columbia. Their first meeting was with the assembly process engineering team and the new COO. After introductions, the COO, Fred Perkins, spoke.

“I really don’t know why you are here,” he commented brusquely. “Profits are only down 5%; it’s probably just a random fluctuation.  I came here with a mandate to cut costs and dammit I did. I couldn’t believe what we were paying for solder paste, and I found a vendor that would charge 25% less. This was the first cost savings I implemented. Solder paste is solder paste. It’s just like butter. When I was COO of American Foods, they were paying too much for butter, and I found a vendor that would charge 9% less. Butter is butter, solder paste is solder paste,” he concluded.

“How much money will you save on paste this year,” Patty inquired.

“For all of our five lines, $100,000,” Fred proudly answered.

“How much profit do your lines produce per year?” The Professor asked.

“We have five, 20 -2 lines,” replied Jane Wilson, the site CFO.

“What’s a 20-2 line? “ asked Patty.

“Oh, sorry. It’s a term we use to here to describe line financial metrics. The ’20’ stands for $20 million in sales and the ‘2’ stands for $2 million in profit.” Jane responded.

“Thanks,” said Patty.

“Oh, but I guess we would have to call them 18.4 -1.84 lines now that the productivity and profit are down by 8%.” Jane sarcastically said as she glared at Fred.

At this comment, Fred lost his cool, he slammed his fist on the table and shouted at Jane. “It isn’t 8%, its only 5% and I told you it’s just a random fluctuation,” he fumed.

Is the lost profit just a random fluctuation? If not, what is the cause? And how are Patty and Rob doing?

Stayed tuned for the latest.

Patty Gets Her Man

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Patty and Rob went to balance the line. They found that this very complex board had 1350 passives, 24 simple ICs (SICs) and nine complex ICs. Currently the chipshooter (CS) is placing all the passives and nine of the SICs.

The flexible placer (FP) is placing the nine complex ICs and 15 SICs. The placement rate for the chip shooter is 60,000/hr. for passives and 3,000/hr. for SICs. The CS cannot place CICs. The FP places complex ICs at 4,000/hr. and passives and SICs at 8,000/hr.

To balance a line, Rob and Patty start by seeing how long it will take the CS to place all of the passives and the FP to place all of the SICs and CICs.

For the CS to place all of the passives

timeCS = 1350 passives/60K passives/hr. = 0.01945 hr. = 81 sec.

The time FP takes to place all of the SICs and CICs is

timeFP = 24 SICs/8K SICs/hr   + 9 CICs/4K CICs/hr = 0.003 hrs + 0.00225 hrs = 18.1 seconds

Since the FP is waiting for the CS, Patty and Rob should move passives to the FP. They will determine the number of passives, x, to move to the FP by equalizing the CS and FP times

tCS = (1350-x) passives/60K passives/hr  = x passives/8K/hr + 18.1 secs/3600 sec/hour

Solving for x:

(1350-x)/60,000 = x/8,000 +18.1/3600

1350 – x = 7.5 x + 301.667

8.5 x = 1048.333

x = 123.33

In other words, 123 passives go to FP (the reason Patty and Rob round down to 123 is due to the much faster placement speed for the CS).

So Patty and Rob moved to 123 passives to the flexible placer.  Each machine’s time should be about the same now.  They performed the following calculation to check their results

tCS = (1350-123)/60,000 = 0.02045 hrs = 73.62 sec.

tFP = 18.1/3600 + 123/8000 = 0.02043 hrs = 73.45 sec.

Patty and Rob then went to the line to physically move the passive feeders to the FP.  They then measured the placement time of the both the CS and FP and found them to be 73.4 and 73.5 sec., respectively, quite close to their calculations.

A meeting was held to discuss the results and the tremendous productivity improvement (81 vs 73.5 second cycle time, an (81-73.5)/81 = 9.26 % improvement.)  Everyone at AJAX was pleased (maybe not Charlie!) and felt the experience was one of great learning.

At the end of the meeting Patty and Rob had a brief chat.

“Patty, I really appreciate all of your help,” said Rob said.

“Don’t forget The Professor. I don’t think I could have handled Charlie without him,” responded Patty.

“Anyway, to show my gratitude, will you allow me to take you to dinner?” asked Rob.

Finding Your ‘Herbie’

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“Your chipshooter is “the Herbie” in your process…, ” The Professor continued.

“That’s it!” a confident voice boomed from the back of the room.

“Who’s that?” Patty asked Rob.

“That’s Chris Conrad, our general manger. He’s a pretty sharp guy.”

Chris continued, “I remember “Herbie” from reading The Goal when I was at Tuck in the 1980s. Herbie was a chubby boy scout, during a hike, he held up all of the scout troop because he was loaded down carrying all of the soda. Finally the scouts realized that they had to help Herbie to make good time in the hike.   My professor assigned us problems to find where there is a constraint in a process. He even called it, ‘Finding the Herbie in the process’.”

“You don’t mean to tell me you’re  gonna take work off them chipshooters are ya?” Charlie impatiently inquired?

“No, the chipshooters will be working just as hard,” The Professor calmly replied.

“How can this be?”asked Charlie in disbelief.

“I made some calculations,” responded The Professor.  “In them, I estimate that if you move passives from the chipshooter to the flexible placer, both machines will have a cycle time of about 73 seconds. Your productivity will increase by about 10%. The chipshooter will be working full time, but the flexible placer will not be waiting for it.”

“Wow,” chimed in Chris, “Our CFO, Tom Stevens, will be thrilled … as am I.”

“Your increase in profit may actually be more than 15 percent,” The Professor added.

The Professor went on, “My calculations were only estimates,  Patty knows how to balance a line.  Give her the exact metrics and she can calculate the actual minimum cycle time. Patty, can you do this?”

“Sure thing Professor,” responded Patty.

Patty and the AJAX team, led by Rob, went off to perform some calculations. Stay tuned to see the results and how they got them.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

‘The Goal’ of Line Balancing

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The day of the line balancing telecom with AJAX had arrived and Patty was nervous. She had a feeling that the meeting might be contentious.

She felt some relief that The Professor would be teleconing in. The Professor had asked Patty to request a brief tour to measure the chipshooter and flexible placer placement times on one of the lines.

Patty arrived at AJAX an hour before the telecon. Rob took her for the tour. After the tour Patty and Rob went to the meeting room. While they were setting the computer projector and telecom equipment up, the attendees started to arrive. Patty had agreed to give a short presentation on the importance of line balancing, to kick things off. Rob had already told her that Charlie, the lead senior engineer, would be a hard sell.

After everyone had arrived and Patty had called The Professor, she began her brief presentation on line balancing. AJAX has three similar assembly lines each with a $2 million Pinnacle ultra high speed chipshooter and one of Pinnacle’s top of the line flexible placers.

On her tour, Patty measured the placement time for the chipshooter at 81 seconds and the flexible placer at 18 seconds. Patty mentioned in her presentation that for maximum productivity the chipshooter and flexible placer should each take the same amount of time. Upon hearing this comment, Charlie hit the roof.

“Let me tell you something about running a manufacturing facility, little girl,” Charlie fumed at Patty. “When I bought them three $2 million chipshooters, I promised Tom Stevens that I would work them puppies to death. Everyone knows that to minimize costs you must use your expensive equipment the most, so I make sure every feeder is full on all them there chip shooters.”

Patty couldn’t tell whether she was more intimidated or annoyed, but was ready to speak when The Professor intervened.

“Charlie, have you read The Goal?” asked the Professor.

“The only ‘Goal’ I have is to down a few cold ones after I finish wit youse guys.” Charlie shot back.

Patty looked a Charlie’s ponderous beer gut and thought to herself, Now that is something I believe!

Was Charlie right? How does The Goal fit in? Will the meeting take a more productive turn? Who is Tom Stevens?

Stay tuned for the latest.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron