Industrial & Specialty Printing - November/December 2012 - 10

Keeping up with technological change
Joseph Fjelstad
Verdant electronics

Technological change is as predictable and perennial as the rising sun. It is also one of the more difficult activities in manufacturing in which a manager can engage. The enlightened and foresighted manager knows that change is inevitable, but adapting to change is not something that is always welcomed or embraced, no matter what benefit might come from the changes that are implemented. Humans are fundamentally creatures of habit and anything that takes them away from those habits is uncomfortable and avoided. There is a time-worn, old adage that goes: “Better the devil you know.” That little aphorism rings all the more truly when applied to the manufacturing floor. Thus, when trying to keep pace with and implement change, prudence suggests that significant preparation be done before attempting to bring on any manner of new technology. For this discussion, technological change includes any new material, process or process deviation, construction, technique, or method that might be introduced onto the manufacturing floor for inclusion in the manufacture a product whether it has a long legacy or it is completely new. It does not matter whether the product is a book, magazine, display panel, or printed electronic device. To succeed in introducing change, it is necessary to develop and use a system

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BusIness ManageMent
that will rigorously identify, verify, and characterize the key parameters that will determine the suitability of the new technology for transition to production both large and small. ManagIng change One of the first things to do on the path to introducing managed change in an orderly manner is to perform a preliminary analysis of the technology to be used and review it thoroughly with those who will be responsible for implementing it. The purpose is to determine whether it is feasible to introduce the technology in light of the present manufacturing system or systems. Benchmarking of the current technologies is an important part of this analysis, because this will provide the measure of the hurdle that must be cleared to establish benefit. The next task is to create some prototypes using the proposed technology. These early efforts will provide samples for evaluation and analysis, possibly pointing out, early on, any potential weaknesses in the prospective new technology. After passing through the prototype stage and getting the early bugs worked out, it will be necessary to produce a statistically significant number of preproduction parts using the new process, material, or equipment to see how well suited it is to the application and shake out and verify the new technology’s fundamental capabilities. Assuming that no major problems are encountered, the next step is to test the product in a manner suited to its function. For printed electronic devices, there will likely be some sort of battery of tests to qualify the new approach. This helps assure the manufacturer and customer that the new technology can clear the pre-established hurdles defined by the

production quantities are produced in a number of different lots and these are run through a full qualification test to determine, with as great a certainty as possible, the product’s reliability using the new technology.

Industrial & Specialty Printing - November/December 2012

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