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SMT Trends and Technologies: Doing More Than One Thing at a Time

With women being renowned for multitasking abilities, perhaps they should be designing production lines--it could make our processes more efficient.

Look at maintenance. Although hardware can last for years, it will pick up dirt during production--with just how much varying from shift to shift. You can plan fixed maintenance slots per day, week, or other fixed period, but production goes down during those slots. If rush jobs are going through you might be tempted to skip maintenance actions, but that will have consequences. KPIs will drift outside control limits, and you may be forced to stop production altogether for repairs.

At the heart of the problem are the traditionally fixed roles of operators, technicians and supervisors, which can lead to a lack of cooperation. Cleaning and inspection is often not the operator’s responsibility, with equipment faults and failures requiring calling in the technician. There is no real feedback loop, with fixed maintenance schedules rigidly telling people what to do and when. And audits generally only look for compliance that maintenance has taken place--not its effectiveness.

Maintenance is thus viewed as a cost or penalty to production, rather than a benefit to productive output and predictability. It is seen as less important than just keeping the line running.  Read the full column here.Editor's Note: This column originally appeared in the September 2013 issue of SMT Magazine.