Circuits Assembly - December 2007 - (Page 32)

SEAs 2007 BEST: A ‘Funky Chicken’ with an EMS Niche Chelsey Drysdale President Bob Wettermann describes the company’s customer service plan. Ed.: For the complete article, see circuitsassembly.com/cms. content/view/5771. EST Inc. (soldering.net) took home the 2007 Service Excellence Award (circuitsassembly.com/sea) for Rework/Repair. President Bob Wettermann recently discussed how his company tracks customer service. The feedback we receive [from the Service Excellence Awards] helps us identify any trends in areas that may need improvement and helps us determine areas of strength. We get the surveys and independently review results in our operations area. We have two to three weeks of heads-up time [for review], and then we meet for an hour-and-ahalf. We try to find common threads – or different ones – to see if people are paying attention. Then we work on actionable items: discrepancies, for instance. What was striking this last time was that people found us to be good from quality and responsiveness perspectives, but also found us pricey. We are currently benchmarking pricing and services, which are customized. Repair and rework is very specific and different for each customer, so pricing is difficult to benchmark. We’re a funky chicken; we are a hired gun in terms of service to fix problems that customers identify. We’re an EMS company, but we are a niche part of EMS activity because we don’t sell equipment. B Wettermann and coworkers of BEST Inc. display their 2007 SEA award for Rework/Repair. All quality/customer concerns are documented on a Corrective Action Request Form (CAR). These are investigated with the appropriate parties to determine where a failure occurred, and a preventive measure is decided on. All CARs are reviewed in our monthly operations meeting. We do many different operations to circuit boards. For example, there are 12 different criteria for solder joints; if there are 144 joints and five to 10,000 boards, when one solder joint is out of whack, is that considered one failure or more? Measurement is difficult. Any complaint is called an issue – such as quality, if something is shipped wrong, or if there is a miscount. The complaint gets logged into our quality system; then we review it and solve the problem. The quality rating would be ‘zero’ for satisfying the customer perfectly in the above example. These are tracked on a percentage basis. And on a monthly basis, employees are informed. ■ circuitsassembly.com 32 Circuits Assembly DECEMBER 2007 http://www.circuitsassembly.com/cms/content/view/5771 http://www.circuitsassembly.com/cms/content/view/5771 http://soldering.net http://circuitsassembly.com/sea http://circuitsassembly.com/sea http://circuitsassembly.com

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

Circuits Assembly - December 2007 Contents Caveat Lector Industry News Market Watch Talking Heads Global Sourcing Screen Printing Better Manufacturing Metalization Options for COB Assembly A Test Comparison of SAC and Non-SAC Pb-Free Solders An A-to-Z Guide to X-Ray Inspection BEST: A ‘Funky Chicken’ with an EMS Niche Tech Tips Wave Soldering Process Doctor Pb-Free Lessons Learned Getting Lean Eastern Approaches Product Spotlight Ad Index Assembly Insider Technical Abstracts

Circuits Assembly - December 2007

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