We at SMT Research firmly believe that you cannot inspect
quality into a product. Defects are
defects and no amount of inspection can change this. Quality
has to be built in.
Inspections will catch a percentage of defects. A higher
percentage of defects passed into the
inspection process will result in a greater amount of
defects in your final product.
The SMT process needs to be statistically sound and in
control to produce a quality product.
”You can not inspect quality
into the product; it is already there.”
W. Edwards Deming
American consultant, statistician, and educator, 1900-1993
Why
The P.O.D.?
With the competitive environment
facing our industry, the SMT machine replacement cycle
has
clearly slowed. Many companies want to keep their
old equipment running as long as possible.
The high cost of new equipment is often prohibitive.
Inevitably high hour machines will exhibit signs of
wear. Machine placement accuracy, overall
speed, and performance will degrade.
Symptoms:
1. Programs must be “tweaked”
because the machine will not place according to CAD
data
2. Inability to shift product builds from
one line to another
3. Excessive off pad and mispicked parts
4. High overall rejection rates
These issues are common to many circuit board assembly
operations and can carry a high cost.
Costs:
1. Decrease in labor utilization
• Time is spent repairing
defects on the line
2. Slow cycle times leading to low throughput
• AOI is repeatedly stopping
the line
• Machine speeds are slowed
down to compensate
3. Products failing in test
• Unnecessary engineering
time spent to correct issues/defects
4. Rework needed
• Labor time spent to
repair defective boards
5. Actual defects being shipped to end users
• Product replacement
costs
• Loss of contracts
We at SMT Research are devoted to helping our customers
eliminate these costs. With P.O.D.
technology we can rectify machine performance issues
quickly and efficiently. Rarely do
machines need a lot of expensive parts and costly repairs.
Most often, all that is needed are
mechanical adjustments and statistical calibration using
our P.O.D. This
brings the capability
back to new OEM specifications.
