Tips to avoid burnout while applying resources to mitigate the impact of two years of Covid.

By the time this is published, we will have been working in “Covid new normal mode” for nearly two years, which means EMS program teams have been working under extreme stress for longer than most physical bodies can handle. This is creating two big dangers: physical damage caused by exposure to long-term stress and disappointing customers becoming acceptable because so many variables are outside of the program team’s control.

In the ’80s, one of the management associations I belonged to had a stress management seminar built around the movie Twelve O’Clock High. The movie is set in England in WWII and follows a new squadron commander from his optimistic arrival through his total burnout. The seminar focused on behavior changes related to command stress in situations where the odds were against most crews surviving, including a rise in irritability, an increase in alcohol consumption, insomnia and a breakdown in decision-making. The commander in the movie experienced a physical and mental breakdown.

In the seminar, we looked at coping mechanisms to deal with occasional stress at work. The stress many teams experience today is closer to what was shown in Twelve O’Clock High. No matter how well you do your job, the odds are stacked against you. And, sadly, most of us now know at least one friend or family member who has died of Covid-related complications.

That said, the Covid new normal isn’t going away anytime soon, so thinking about coping mechanisms is important. Here are a few stress-management tips to consider:

• Sugar, caffeine and nicotine provide an energy spike and then depress your system. If you are hitting the coffee pot or candy machine frequently, you are actually tiring yourself out.
• Junk food is easy and convenient to grab when short on time. However, it may be pushing you closer to serious health issues if it is now the go-to meal.
• Alcohol may seem like a stress reliever, but it is also a depressant.
• Long stretches of sitting at your desk are physically damaging.

You may not be able to control the stress of the new normal, but you can control your coping mechanisms. Good coping behaviors include:

• Limit caffeine and sugar intake.
• Focus on healthy eating. It will end heartburn and help with insomnia.
• Plan time for exercise, including lunchtime walks outdoors or around the facility, using home exercise equipment, and building simple stretches into your daily routine. Exercise releases hormones that combat stress and balances out desk time.
• Develop a disconnect strategy that lets you mentally relax:
  • Headphones at lunch or planned break times
  • Scheduled relaxation time during your off hours
  • Scheduled fun activities with family or friends
• Ask for help if you are overwhelmed. Many department heads I know have told their teams to request resources if the workload becomes overwhelming. HR wellness programs often have resources for stress management or counseling as well. Don’t wait until the burnout is overwhelming to explore coping mechanisms.

The second danger relates to the cult of mediocrity. The electronics manufacturing services industry has been built on the idea EMS providers do things faster, better and cheaper than their OEM customers. In the new normal, cost increases are a given, and material and logistics constraints are building frequent customer disappointment into the service equation.

I use the airline gate agent analogy frequently in my articles because it has a similar chaos factor. On a bad weather day, there are two kinds of gate agents: One is customer-avoidant and does the job mechanically with minimum critical thinking or effort; the other communicates frequently and looks for ways to improve the situation in the areas they can still control.

Do something for a few weeks and it becomes a habit. Right now, the new normal habit is accepting customer disappointment as a given. Some things will be out of your control, but in what areas can you improve?

In my consulting business, I see material constraints impacting everyone. Some companies have a little more leverage than others, but none has a magic bullet to change the situation. The one differentiator I see is some companies are actively applying resources to improve areas they can control.

Typical examples include:

• Applying continuous improvement disciplines such as Lean Six Sigma to address higher levels of material-related defects or improve throughput to compensate for material arrival delays
• Developing software tools to increase purchasing’s visibility into material availability and automate searches for available stock
• Utilizing engineering resources to identify more complex alternate sourcing strategies when a standard cross isn’t available.

In short, don’t let the new normal create a cult of mediocrity within your team. Figure out what you can control and then show customers you are improving in the areas you do control to help mitigate the impact of the external chaos. An added benefit of incremental control improvements is stress relief, particularly if you celebrate those small wins as a team.

You can’t eradicate the new normal completely, but you can control how you deal with it. When things start to improve, the EMS providers that have shown they are still trying to go the extra mile will win accounts fleeing the cult of mediocrity. 

SUSAN MUCHA  is president of Powell-Mucha Consulting Inc. (powell-muchaconsulting.com), a consulting firm providing strategic planning, training and market positioning support to EMS companies, and author of Find It. Book It. Grow It. A Robust Process for Account Acquisition in Electronics Manufacturing Services; smucha@powell-muchaconsulting.com.

To best help customers, suppliers must invest in dedicated software experts.

“Value add” is a term bandied about, especially when a business is in the process of selling its products or services to another one. Likewise, in manufacturing the term “capital investment” describes the process of a business selling its products to another. All too often, much less “value” is derived by the “investment.”

Over the years – decades, in fact – most of the equipment and services I’ve purchased have been of dubious value and less an investment than a needed cost. A significant portion of any capital budget is spent either replacing legacy equipment or on substantial repairs to keep old equipment functioning. While there are times a new technology is truly a game-breaking investment and provides real value for the future, the majority of capital spent is for the same-old, same-old.

Historically, capital equipment used in the fabrication of printed circuit boards has relied heavily on electromechanical/PLC controls to operate. Mechanics in most companies’ maintenance departments can troubleshoot and service or fix this technology reasonably well. Many a scrubber, etcher or drill that may be decades old can be found still chugging along in most established fabrication facilities. Technology and events, however, are impacting the same-old and offering an opportunity for some that, to date, have not been embraced.

A process for addressing RMA for multi-factory production.

In a normal business environment, the electronics manufacturing services (EMS) industry has more variation than that of a Lean original equipment manufacturer (OEM). This doesn’t mean EMS providers are disorganized. It simply highlights the challenges of an environment where customer inputs dictate supply-chain choices, processes and validation methodologies that would normally be optimized to minimize variation at a Lean OEM. Pandemic restrictions, supply-chain shortages, logistics constraints and demand spikes of 2021 have caused further variation at EMS providers and customers. However, those challenges serve as incentive to increase Lean discipline.

Past columns have highlighted Lean Six Sigma core tools such Gemba and the DMAIC process that help identify and correct quality issues that develop in manufacturing operations as project assumptions change. Lean Six Sigma is helping create an empowered, educated workforce at SigmaTron, capable of rapidly addressing unanticipated challenges found in today’s production environments. That said, defects can escape the factory or be induced by activities once product leaves the factory. Focusing on this area can have a long-term impact on eliminating another set of defect opportunities: muda (waste) and cost.

In SigmaTron’s model, field-service engineers work with customers that have higher volume or more technically sophisticated products to determine the root cause of field returns. While the company is achieving industry-standard low defect rates on some of its highest volume programs, even that low percentage generates monthly returns when the printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) count is in the millions.

Shake, rattle and roll: Your devices often experience it all.

The stark choices of organisms are to adapt, move or die. Our electronics sometimes tough it out so we can do our jobs or simply have a good romp on our favorite ride. No matter the purpose, extreme weather puts an electrical system to the test.

Whether the element is sand, saltwater, sunshine or perhaps a lack of thereof, many dangers age a system prematurely. Most faults caused by the environment are single-component failures. Okay, a part failed. Why? What is the root cause, and what can we do to prevent it from becoming part of a larger trend? Answering that two-part question is the gist of reliability engineering.

What broke is not always evident. Cosmetic damage or a burn scar may point the way if you’re lucky. In most cases, diagnosis is not that easy. Check connectors first, while the board-level investigation usually centers around the FETs that bring power to the device that is out of spec or failing altogether. Somewhere in there a tiny junction has burned up. The repair and return unit or perhaps field service technicians are a good source of reliability anecdotes.

Shock and vibration over time will make anything rattle itself to pieces. We can run into unexpected issues with resonant frequencies. Remember the footage of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. “Galloping Gertie” came down, as the roadway itself was wind-tossed into 30' waves. The same thing happens on a smaller scale and at higher frequencies all around us. Something will begin to rattle in the wind until it breaks off.

Spread out components to relieve heat buildup. What separates high-reliability PCB footprints from standard ones? You’ll see the difference in the size of the solder pads. Expect more room for the toe fillet. This often increases the personal space around the component, while providing additional metal-to-air interface area for convective heat dissipation. The additional spacing created by the extra metal may not seem like much, but on aggregate has been shown to reduce junction temperatures.

Derating for system robustness. The other thing that separates high-reliability footprints is simple. Stuff them with components that are better than good enough. Twice as good is a high bar, and a good place to start when it comes to derating components. If a 50V cap is sufficient, go for the 100V version.

Chunky hardware with closer spacing isn’t just for the steampunk effect. Plan a few mounting holes in the middle of the board, rather than just the corners. You’ve seen a heat map. The hot spot isn’t on the edges. As a practical matter, a gratuitous hole here or there could be a bargaining chip as the board evolves into something more crowded than originally planned. You know what they say about plans.

FIGURE 1. While this overnight accumulation looks tame to some, moisture is an archenemy of electronics (and other metal objects).

FIGURE 2. The car suffers in the midday sun, and I come along and demand it envelop me in a cocoon of frigid air. Like it or not, that’s hard on the equipment.

Commercial- versus industrial-grade components. It was easy to distinguish the TTL packages of yesteryear. The high-reliability units had a device number “54,” rather than the “74” used on commercial versions (FIGURE 3). LS stands for low-power Schottky, which predates the even lower-power CMOS architecture. This example is a stand-in for the universe of components that follow this technology path.

FIGURE 3. This hex inverter circuit plays out on different footprints, starting with DIP packages, and then SOIC became the surface mount version for the plastic package. The underlying silicon underwent several iterations, and the high-reliability versions are on their own package outlines. (Source: Netsonic)

Operating ambient temperature range and package comparison:

54 = -55°C min., 125°C max. Packages: CDIP, LCCC, CFP
74 = 0°C min., 70°C max. Packages: PDIP, SOIC

Ceramic packages withstand a greater range of temperatures than plastic ones. No surprise high-reliability packages are not always the smallest available. It’s a paradigm that carries through connectors down to passives. Get those commits early and nurture them so the part pipeline is there when you need it. Mil-spec parts are an upgrade whether the board is Class 3 or Class II commercial, so it’s about cost and availability.

Use adhesives and conformal coatings to prevent unintentional disassembly. For everything to stay put, a shaker table will be part of your life. These instruments of mechanical terror are specially designed to shake other smaller things to the point of failure. You can only imagine how overbuilt a shaker table must be to outlast whatever is bolted down on its base plate.

When the dust settles, the weakest link(s) will be revealed, and additional actions can be taken. During the preproduction trials on the Pixel laptop, we had a connector that would not stay put after the 3' drop test. We hope you never give your laptop a 3' drop onto concrete, but if you do, a little bracket holds the USB connector in place.

Riding around on the roof of a car is another challenge you should never have to face. Putting a Lidar detector up there, on the other hand, can be loads of fun (FIGURE 4). Simultaneous location and mapping (with the somewhat unfortunate acronym SLAM) require an immense amount of processing while jostling around through rain and sleet. The connectors, in particular, are well overbuilt, especially when you’re looking for a place to put that ethernet port. Nonetheless, a bead of glue around the base is an insurance policy. Post-assembly coatings make rework next to impossible but also protect the devices from failure, making it a good idea for space-bound projects.

FIGURE 4. A car roof is a good place to be out in the elements. Any outdoor location will do, while motion will amplify the effects.

Use heavier copper to give the boards some backbone. Not sure if anyone besides those in the PCB industry use copper weight as the significant variable to determine its thickness, but here we are. Take 1 oz. of copper, keeping in mind it is very malleable, and shape it into a 1' square of even thickness. That’s 1 oz. copper and typically about as much as would be used for the outer layers, while the innerlayers typically get half that.

Both inner- and outer layers can be plated up. One result of this is an increase in the minimum trace width and spacing geometry. The thicker the copper, the coarser the line-to-line pitch becomes. At the extreme, an entire base plate of copper with no circuit pattern can be incorporated into a board. That could be a solid copper bottom layer or as a central metal core. For a local effect, a so-called coin can be embedded as an integral heat sink.

Shock mount electronics inside a cage within a cage. Flight cases offer a standard 19" equipment rack-mount isolated from a secondary outer case that ensures the contents are not subjected to sudden g-forces from being loaded and transported. Something is better than nothing when it comes to bolstering the unit against the expected use-case.

Depending on where you want to go and what you want to do, your electronics must be hardened against failure. We are often the cause. Who hasn’t dropped their phone? The reliability lab focuses on finding root causes of failure. Take whatever measures are necessary and prudent for the perils the gear is likely to face.

Sometimes, reparability will suffer for the effort of making it bulletproof. The motivation is to reduce or eliminate repairs in the first place. Fail fast and go to mass production with the most solid product you can put out there. Your customers will then put it to the test so you can continue the cycle of continuous improvement.

JOHN BURKHERT JR. is a career PCB designer experienced in military, telecom, consumer hardware and, lately, the automotive industry. Originally, he was an RF specialist but is compelled to flip the bit now and then to fill the need for high-speed digital design. He enjoys playing bass and racing bikes when he's not writing about or performing PCB layout. His column is produced by Cadence Design Systems and runs monthly.