BILLINGSTAD, NORWAY – Kitron has entered into a production agreement with Easy Aerial Inc, a rapidly growing US company that develops autonomous UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) solutions.

The multi-year, multimillion-dollar manufacturing partnership will be supported at Kitron’s Windber, Pennsylvania, facility.

“Easy Aerial continues to expand its operations through collaborations with strategic partners. We are delighted to have signed an agreement with Kitron, which has a leading position in electronic manufacturing services, has the capacity to produce large volumes and offers advanced front-end services,” says Ivan Stamatovski, CTO of Easy Aerial.

“We are very happy that Easy Aerial has chosen Kitron as a manufacturing partner to support its growth. Kitron has a long history within the defense and homeland security market, and the drone segment provides exciting growth opportunities, not least in the US, where our Windber facility is well-positioned to meet that demand. Signing a long-term partnership agreement with Easy Aerial, a market leader in UAV solutions, is great recognition," says Gary Tarallo, Managing Director of Kitron, US Operations.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, Easy Aerial has a team of over 100 engineers, designers and aerospace experts. The company develops military-grade autonomous UAV solutions for security, mapping and inspection applications. Easy Aerial, in addition to servicing many commercial verticals, completely services DoD and governmental customers by sustaining USA-based production, and maintaining NDAA compliance with associated certifications (ISO, AS, CMMx) as to fit federal operational requirements.

“Since its founding, Easy Aerial has rapidly grown in both size and scope. Today, its mission includes using drones to save lives , and protect both assets and infrastructure. Easy Aerial’s solutions are also capable of providing situational awareness to emergency first responders, monitoring crowds, and assisting with security management among several additional commercial uses,” says Ido Gur, CEO of Easy Aerial.

SUWANEE, GA – While many processes are already automated and run quite smoothly in modern electronics factories, the flow of materials is still an exception in many cases and causes unnecessarily high costs. The initial plans and the actual needs on the line often diverge because of static material requirements planning. This leads either to material bottlenecks during production runs and ultimately to line stops or to the preventive accumulation of space-wasting “emergency stocks” directly at the SMT line. A new application in the WORKS smart shopfloor management suite from market and technology leader ASMPT effectively counteracts this. WORKS Material Demand Calculation dynamically calculates the material requirements for definable time intervals taking all incidents into account and continuously adjusts the material requirements. The goal is to always have the right material available at the right time in the right quantity in the right place and to create maximum transparency in warehouses and around the lines.

Always up to date

Many electronics manufacturers still calculate their material requirements in static processes prior to the start of production and use the results for the entire production cycle. Too tightly calculated material supplies or unexpected events can quickly lead to expensive line downtime. If the calculations include overly large buffers, however, materials may back up at the line WORKS Material Demand Calculation (MDC) continuously analyses material consumption, cycle times and production progress and combines this data. In this way, it continuously computes actual material requirements and updates them dynamically.

Since no two factories are alike, the time intervals for the material requirements calculations can be defined individually. WORKS Material Demand Calculation thus turns rigid material planning and supply into a time-based and flexible closed-loop control system that dynamically computes even non-linear material consumption during setups and teardowns and compensates for disturbances such as increased scrap or non-scheduled maintenance cycles. “This new solution optimally complements our proven applications in the WORKS smart shop floor management suite for the the ‘Logistics’ workflow. It enables us to offer our customers unprecedented added value by providing them a basis for their comprehensively automated material supply that is always adapted to current conditions,” says Erwin Beck, Head of Product Management Automation Solutions at ASMPT.

Valuable space on the shop floor

Like unscheduled line downtimes, unnecessary manual activities or travel times between lines and warehouses, wasted space on the shop floor is a disruptive factor that drives up costs. If “emergency stocks” no longer need to be stored at the line, the freed-up space can be used much more effectively for productive machines, special equipment or autonomous transport systems (AIVs).

Seamlessly integrated into ASMPT’s Open Automation concept

“Like all the applications in our WORKS suite, the Material Demand Calculation fits seamlessly into our modular Open Automation concept and paves the way for electronics manufacturers to implement their Integrated Smart Factory in stages,” says Erwin Beck. WORKS Material Demand Calculation completely eliminates manual reordering processes and thus makes an important contribution to the automation and optimization of internal logistics. AIV fleets can now take over the material supply completely and independently, whether according to the milk-run principle, with dedicated deliveries, or according to other criteria. In addition, employees get relief from unnecessary trips and are notified and instructed automatically and just in time regarding new material supply requests by WORKS Command Center – via smartphone, tablet, or smartwatch.

WORKS Material Demand Calculation in the ‘Facts on Open Automation’ livestream

WORKS Material Demand Calculation is also a topic in our ‘Facts on Open Automation’ livestream on February 22, 2023, in which everything revolves around perfection in material management.

This ASMPT show format offers viewers each month a roughly half-hour English-language livestream around ASMPT’s Open Automation concept with live feeds from international SMT hot-spots, interviews with experts, practical examples from SMT productions, and much more.

More information about the ‘Facts on Open Automation’ series of livestreams is available at https://facts-on-open-automation.smt.asmpt.events/ 

BANNOCKBURN, IL – In recognition of their leadership and their significant contributions of time and talent to IPC and the electronics manufacturing industry, three IPC volunteers were presented with the IPC President’s Award at IPC APEX EXPO in San Diego, Calif on January 24, 2023. Recipients were Steven Bowles, Lockheed Martin; Stan Rak, SF Rak Company; and Savita Ganjigatti, Sienna ECAD Technologies Private Limited.

Steven Bowles is a member of more than 30 standards development committees, holding leadership roles as Chair of 3-10 Printed Board Base Materials, D- 13 Flexible Circuits Base Materials, D-15 Flexible Circuits Test Methods, and D-11 Flexible Circuits Design. He is the Chair Emeritus of 2-30 Terms and Definitions Committee. Bowles is also a member of the Committee Chairman’s Council and a Lifetime Member of IPC’s Technical Activities Executive Committee (TAEC). He is a member of the Lead-Free Electronics Risk Management, (PERM) Council, a Mentor in IPC’s Emerging Engineer Program, and was the very first recipient of IPC’s Rising Star Award in 2015. Winner of many committee leadership and committee service awards, Bowles also serves as an IPC standards committee A-Team leader.

Stan Rak is the chair of the IPC APEX EXPO 2023 Technical Program Committee (TPC) where he has served for six Technical Conferences in different roles, working closely with IPC staff and industry experts on program development. Developments include the expansion and strengthening of the TPC, the introduction of Special Sessions designed to stimulate audience participation in emerging fields and assisting with the transition to a digital document format for improved communications with authors. Rak has contributed to the inaugural releases of the standards, IPC-5262, IPC J-STD-001GA/IPC-A-610GA, and IPC-7093. He received the IPC Rising Star Award in 2016 for IPC-related contributions to the automotive electronics manufacturing industry.

Savita Ganjigatti has been involved in the industry for more than 30 years, and served as a steering committee member for the IPC 2022 Global Design Competition, representing the Asia Pacific region. A program panel member of the IPC Global Thought Leadership Program, she has also serves on the IPC India Technical Advisory Committee, was instrumental in starting the PCB competition in that region, and conducted many design contests. Ganjigatti was a critical in the development of the Women in India Electronics group, paper presentations, and standards reviews facilitated by IPC India. She helped to implement “PCB Design Engineering” as an elective at several Indian universities, and she is actively involved in skill development initiatives of the Indian central government.

“The leadership and expertise of Steven, Stan, and Savita sets the standard for building electronics better,” said John W. Mitchell, IPC president and CEO. “By presenting them with IPC President’s Awards, we are showing our appreciation for their significant contributions to IPC and the global electronics manufacturing industry.”

TORONTO – Bittele Electronics Inc., a Toronto-based PCB assembly company specializing in high quality prototype and low-to-mid volume printed circuit board assembly, announced today that it successfully renewed the ISO 9001:2015 quality management certification for its Markham, Ontario, facility. Bittele says the ISO 9001:2015 certification renewal demonstrates its commitment to quality and continuous improvement.

The ISO 9001:2015 certification is a quality audit and comprehensive process review that includes writing quality procedures and taking actions to improve a quality system. Bittele partnered with SGS Canada, a leading testing and certification company, to thoroughly audit and review its quality management system and verify compliance with the ISO 9001:2015 standard.

"The ISO 9001:2015 certification embodies our core values and reminds us of the importance of our strategic, winning partnerships with our customers and vendors," said Ben Yang, CEO of Bittele Electronics. "This certification demonstrates our belief in continually improving our processes. We want to thank our employees who worked with our Quality Department to achieve this monumental goal."

For more information about Bittele’s high-quality PCB Fabrication and Assembly Services, please email sales@7pcb.com for more information.