Circuits Assembly - November 2007 - (Page 58)

Lean Manufacturing spot where it is occurring (3G), everyone sees the situation firsthand. We find employees are then more apt to rally around the Kaizen event, better grasp the improvement opportunity and commit to fixing it to mutual satisfaction. This process becomes so systematic that improvements are made much more efficiently. Take, for example, a leading telecom OEM. The company used a highly manual demand management process and had an average product delivery lead time that was falling well short of customer requirements. The company needed a more stable and predictable operations environment to remain competitive. But how to achieve that seemed daunting and unattainable. With the company, we conducted a value stream mapping analysis of the supply chain processes, which illustrated redundancies that identified what needed to be changed. This approach enabled the organization to carefully look at its manufacturing processes, from the physical layout to its internal team structure and how that team collaborated with suppliers. As a result, the company could better determine areas of waste (time, resources, materials, etc.) in the process and where improvement opportunities existed. Using Kaizen events, the firm determined it would first implement changes with its demand management processes. The key was to first simplify, then automate, the process. Three years and dozens of Kaizen events later, the company realized dramatic improvements: • Product lead times reduced by 78%. • Purchasing notification time cut by nearly 85%. • Days required to respond to end-customers reduced by 67%. In some cases, the improvement measures are one line within a facility; in other cases, the team will visit the customer site and drive changes at both the manufacturing plant and customer locations, as with the telecom customer. An effective Lean process cannot exist without a culture committed to the process of improvement: a Kaizen culture. If leaders don’t create an environment where employees are empowered and rewarded for thinking of better ways to do things, results will stagnate and Lean deployment will fail. ■ *Ed.: Flextronics' acquisition of Solectron was finalized last month. Continued from pg. 58 NaCl equivalence. These assemblies were 8 x 4" with a dense SMT component population. Using localized extraction was the crystal on the bottom side near the selective pallet area (which is part of the high impendence circuit), the selective solder connector, and a topside via area connected to the circuit. IC results show the selective solder area had acceptable levels of flux that are heat-activated and meet Foresite-recommended limits. The area of the crystal near the selective solder process for the two failures shows high WOA only, indicating a heavy fluxing and trapped, unreacted flux on the crystal and on the topside of the via near the selective solder area. This level of WOA from the wave soldering flux is moisture absorbing and conductive and causing the leakage issues. Compared to the current production board that passed humidity testing, the level of WOA shows a greatly reduced level of flux compared to all the other current production. This variation is currently under investigation. Using localized extractions with IC, we are able to see the ionic differences from soldering and fluxing processes that are creating stray voltage areas through the partially heat-activated no-clean flux residues. Figure 1. Selective wave pallet with crystal and via locations (shown by arrow). These residues are moisture-absorbing and in most cases insufficiently corrosive to cause a dendrite short, yet able to create a leakage path capable of a measurable short. This leakage path can drain batteries, influence critical readings and shut down high impedance sensitive circuits. This investigation shows no-clean, low-solids flux residues that are not heat-activated will cause performance problems, but must be investigated by localized extraction techniques to isolate the small pockets of contamination that cause the problems. ■ circuitsassembly.com 58 Circuits Assembly NOVEMBER 2007 http://circuitsassembly.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Circuits Assembly - November 2007

Circuits Assembly - November 2007 Contents Caveat Lector Industry News Market Watch Talking Heads Focus on Business Global Sourcing On the Forefront Screen Printing Better Manufacturing Pb-Free Manufacturing from a Tier III EMS Perspective ‘Living Documents, Subject to Change’ Creating Ideal Solder Joints An Alternative Drying Process for MSDs ‘Customer Satisfaction is More than a Score’ Optoelectronic Substrates: Will They Happen? Tech Tips Wave Soldering Process Doctor Test and Inspection Getting Lean Materials World Equipment Advances Product Spotlight Assembly Insider Technical Abstracts Ad Index

Circuits Assembly - November 2007

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