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Facing the Future: Successfully Navigating the Uncertain Path Ahead
Unimicron Germany Rises from the Ashes with New Smart Factory
April 30, 2018 | Pete Starkey, I-Connect007 and Michael Weinhold, EIPCEstimated reading time: 9 minutes
Figure 25: Michael Weinhold with Peter Alliston.
Figure 26: Alun Morgan with Tamara den Daas and Kirsten Smit-Westenberg.
The main attraction of the evening was a popular rock band from Cologne called Brings, clad for some strange reason in tartan trews and kilts although I couldn’t work out any Scottish connection. Their music was a sort of heavy metal with an oompah beat. Loud—it certainly got the locals up and dancing until long after the sun had gone down.
Figure 27: The rock band, “Brings.”
Figure 28: Heavy metal oompah in tartan kilt.
Figure 29: Pete Starkey with Kirsten Smit-Westenberg and Thomas Michels.
Figure 30: Late in the evening.
It’s a rare and wonderful experience to be at the opening of a major new PCB production facility in Europe. It could so easily have gone the opposite way had it not been for the commitment of people like Gerard van Dierendonck and Rico Schlüter, their team of managers and engineers and their skilled workforce. These were surely the fundamental determining factors in Unimicron’s decision to maintain their strategy of providing a local one-stop-shop solution to European customers within the automotive, renewable energy and industrial sectors.
Although the Unimicron Germany facility has the capability and capacity to manufacture lot sizes up to 5,000 square metres, it is definitely not a volume production plant; it is the exemplary smart factory in every sense. My personal interpretation is that every panel is effectively a unique job in its own right; whether it belongs to a quick-turn prototype or a production runner it is treated the same, and its complete manufacturing, inspection and test history is recorded in every detail. I fear for the fortunes of smaller companies in Europe that do not have the resources to invest to the level of capability, automation, flexibility and traceability they would need to remain competitive with this kind of operation.
If you are interested to learn more, Rico Schlüter will present an introduction to the new Unimicron factory at the EIPC 50th Anniversary Summer Conference on June 21 – 22 in Dusseldorf when the highlight of the bonus programme will be a guided tour of the factory. You can register here.
Photography by Alun Morgan, EIPC
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