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Getting Lean

Allen Abell 2018Outside suppliers can also affect a facility’s quality levels.

Use of Lean manufacturing philosophy and Lean Six Sigma tools have contributed to SigmaTron International’s quality and production teams achieving superior levels of quality, particularly within assembly operations. That said, even with outstanding process control, incoming material can impact achievement of Six Sigma quality levels. As a result, quality management needs to have a strategy for both ensuring supplier quality and identifying and correcting issues when that quality drops.

In this EMS provider’s model, suppliers are asked to complete a self-audit and provide applicable document examples and a copy of a Development Manual, Control Plan, PFMEA, Internal and External PPM data, Quality Reliability and Test equipment list and other documentation, if required, as part of the qualification process. If the subsequent score indicates a need for improvement, the EMS provider assigns a supplier quality engineer (SQE) who works with the supplier’s assigned stakeholders to meet the agreed-on improvement goal.

In cases where results of the self-audit or quality issues drive the need for additional scrutiny, a virtual or onsite audit may be conducted by the EMS provider. Audits for suppliers in North America are conducted by a US team and audits for suppliers in Asia are conducted by a team from the EMS provider’s international purchasing office (IPO) in Taiwan.

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Anita Tucker 1Looking within the organization can yield unexpected benefits.

Benchmarking is an integral part of any continuous improvement strategy. There are typically three types of benchmarking: cross-industry, competitive and internal. Cross-industry benchmarking looks at similar processes in different industries and often delivers the biggest breakthroughs because it helps companies identify processes and systems not widely used in their industries. One example is Southwest Airlines benchmarking NASCAR pit crews’ performance. Competitive benchmarking looks at data from competitors. The challenge is that direct competitors are not likely to share at the level possible with a cross-industry benchmarking exercise, and given the similarity of processes, the best-case improvement is often just being as good as your best competitor.

Internal benchmarking can take two forms. In the first form, processes and systems are evaluated against Lean manufacturing standards to target areas of improvement. In the second form, different facilities of a company are benchmarked to find improvements based on differences in processes and systems.

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Leveraging additive manufacturing technology to mistake-proof production.

One thing OEMs universally agree on is that none of them likes non-recurring engineering (NRE) charges. Implemented as part of new product introduction (NPI), however, custom tooling, fixtures and jigs can eliminate defect opportunities by minimizing process variation that could otherwise occur when those issues can’t be resolved through product design changes. They are also a good tool when a production team identifies the need for a poka-yoke, or mistake-proofing solution, later in a product’s lifecycle.

The concept of poka-yoke was developed by Shigeo Shingo as part of the Toyota Production System (TPS). When applied, the resulting process improvement eliminates a specific defect. Its focus on simplicity is its strength, in that simple fixes are often the best solution for small variances in the manufacturing process. Simple fixes are also easy to rapidly implement and encourage production operator involvement in the pursuit of product perfection. That said, when fixtures are procured through third parties, the cost may exceed the benefit.

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Automating inspection in secondary assembly operations.

One of the first lessons in quality management is the difference between quality assurance and quality control. Quality assurance focuses on eliminating defect opportunities before they occur, while quality control focuses on inspection strategies that eliminate defects before they escape the factory. There is universal agreement that quality assurance is more cost effective than quality control. Lean manufacturing principles are based on a quality assurance focus. That said, use of automated inspection equipment has been growing dramatically in recent years because increasing density and complexity in printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs) is driving the need for a blended quality assurance/quality control approach that includes mass inspection.

Over the past 18 months, SigmaTron International's facility in Tijuana, Mexico, has been exploring the best way to automate inspection and integrate the captured data into real-time corrective action throughout its entire PCBA assembly process. A July 2022 PCD&F/CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY column, "An Industry 4.0 Approach to Employing 3-D AOI on an SMT Line," discussed the journey of integrating Industry 4.0 capabilities in a Lean Six Sigma framework in this facility's SMT area. Once that phase was completed, implementation of 3-D AOI capability began in secondary assembly work cells. Typical secondary assembly operations include soldering cables and components such as switches which can't be reflowed, adding rubber caps and placing QR labels.

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MES upgrades capture kanban inventory levels, allowing electronic replenishment pulls.

The visual factory has come a long way since the concept was introduced, moving from production status viewable by walking the factory floor to a comprehensive collection of real-time data viewable from any interconnected computer. That evolution isn't seamless for many electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers, however. While newer equipment platforms are designed to integrate with manufacturing execution systems (MES) easily, legacy equipment platforms may require specialized programming or other workarounds to achieve desired interoperability. Equipment communication incompatibilities often lead to multiple shop floor control systems being utilized among work areas, which is inherently inefficient.

SigmaTron International's Chihuahua, Mexico, facility recently dealt with these issues when the facility began transitioning to the company's proprietary Tango MES. The company's corporate IT and operations teams have worked together to define enhanced shop floor capabilities in production and are upgrading system capabilities across facilities. The challenge for facilities implementing the latest enhancements is creating efficient equipment interfaces and integrating or replacing legacy processes.

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A DoE reveals the packaging type matters less than the process used.

The need for electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection is drilled into production workers from day one in most electronics manufacturing facilities. Most facilities have multiple layers of protection including floor tiles or conductive coating, smocks, individual grounding devices, ESD mats on workstations, and ionizing blowers throughout the production process. There are also multiple layers of protection from conductive totes to metalized bags for product as it ships out. There is a tendency to believe more protection is always better. Given that the seven wastes include both defects and overprocessing, however, from a Lean manufacturing standpoint there is value in analyzing how much protection is required for shipped products. Considering whether multiple layers of protection create a false sense of security with operators involved in pack/unpack operations also has value.

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