-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- smt007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueThe Butterfly Effect
The basis of chaos theory is a key concept known as the “butterfly effect.” It’s the idea that a small event in one place creates a cascading set of events elsewhere. So, how is the EMS landscape changing? We’re tracking the concerns and dynamics of this landscape, and there’s a lot to learn.
Coming to Terms With AI
In this issue, we examine the profound effect artificial intelligence and machine learning are having on manufacturing and business processes. We follow technology, innovation, and money as automation becomes the new key indicator of growth in our industry.
Box Build
One trend is to add box build and final assembly to your product offering. In this issue, we explore the opportunities and risks of adding system assembly to your service portfolio.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - smt007 Magazine
Koh Young Opens New North American Facility
October 28, 2019 | Andy ShaughnessyEstimated reading time: 6 minutes
Koh Young America recently opened its new corporate headquarters for the Americas outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I attended the open house and spoke with Joel Scutchfield, director of sales for the Americas, about the state-of-the-art facility and the benefits of relocating to the East Coast.
Andy Shaughnessy: I’m here at the Koh Young America open house for their new facility in Gwinnett County. Joel, tell us about this facility.
Joel Scutchfield: Absolutely, Andy. We’re incredibly happy to have you here today and have the opportunity to talk with you. For some time now, we’ve been planning for what we consider to be the next leap forward in improving the overall customer experience that we can offer. Our complete focus is on serving our customers in a much more aggressive, efficient, and all-encompassing way. To improve the customer experience, we needed a facility that allowed us to bring all the right people together from a collaboration perspective and have all of the right tools and systems in one place to provide training, demonstrations, and research for customer projects and applications. Now, we can better test new hardware, software, and special applications our customers bring us. Then, we can supply definitive results before installing a system on their floor.
Again, this facility is all about improving the customer experience for our customers and prospects. And from that, we feel that both our business and their business will grow, which is the key driver. We’re taking the approach of fostering happy customers for life, which is the whole edict behind our celebration today, and what we’ve achieved by opening this facility. It has been a lot of work to get to this point, but looking around today, it’s impressive. It’s an ultramodern facility, and we’re not even finished yet. We have a lot of ideas we still want to implement, plus processes and procedures in the way that we train and how we can best use the demonstration room. We want to help the customer and ensure when they leave here, they’re good to go. We want them to be power users of our systems and software that will enable them to drive their business forward.
Shaughnessy: You have the machines set up. How many machines do you have here?
Scutchfield: Currently, we have 10 machines installed in our demo room plus two in our training rooms, which represents various technologies that we serve, but we have room for about 15 fully outfitted. There have been discussions about bringing a system in from one of our pick-and-place partners to continue to evolve and develop the mount feedback initiative. We’re taking information from our pre-reflow AOI system and feeding that to the mounter for identification of anomalies with things like feeders, spindles, nozzles, etc., which all lead back to the self-correcting, self-healing line. There are lots of opportunities with that, and our facility allows us the space to do that and more.
Shaughnessy: So, it’s also for training. You could train customers, but if you have new people come on board, you can train them.
Scutchfield: Right, we have the demo area, plus separate training rooms for both SPI and AOI. Training is important to complement the demo and process verification initiatives, as I mentioned earlier. I sat in one of the other sessions here earlier in the day with a large group of our visiting customers. Training was one of the things I wanted to emphasize to them. We are making a concerted push to step up the capabilities of all our service and application team members by cross-training them to ensure we’re running a closed-loop system when it comes to how we execute our internal training. We want everyone to be well-trained and fresh as new systems and software are released. We also want to provide information to our customers on all aspects of new software, features, and even systems before they’re released into the field. Our field service engineers do a lot of field training. When a customer buys a machine, the field service engineers typically do the first round of training on the customer’s floor. So, we want to make sure they have been trained to our rigorous standards, including how to “train” someone properly, so it’s not all technical.
Shaughnessy: You’re training the trainer.
Page 1 of 2
Suggested Items
Siemens, Intel Foundry Collaborate to Deliver New Tools Certifications and EMIB/3D-IC Innovation
06/25/2024 | Siemens Digital IndustriesSiemens Digital Industries Software announced that its ongoing collaboration with Intel Foundry has established a new Electronic Design Automation (EDA) product certification, as well as an embedded multi-die interconnect bridge (EMIB) enablement breakthrough that can help mutual customers leverage the performance, space and power efficiency advantages of 3D-IC (3D integrated circuit) designs much more quickly.
Schweizer, Zollner Announce Strategic Partnership in the Field of Power Embedding
06/25/2024 | Schweizer Electronic AGTo achieve a CO2-neutral world and an All-Electric Society, where electricity is the primary energy source, innovations like high power densities, reduced losses and system cost advantages are essential.
Telespazio Joins Viasat’s ELEVATE Program to Provide Satellite Solutions for Remote IoT Connectivity
06/24/2024 | InmarsatELEVATE is a growth program, ecosystem and marketplace for ambitious IoT solution providers, enablers and OEMs who want to work with Viasat to use its network and footprint to scale.
DigiKey Receives ISO 27001 Certification, Adding to Robust Information Security Program THIEF
06/21/2024 | Digi-KeyDigiKey, a leading global commerce distributor offering the largest selection of technical components and automation products in stock for immediate shipment, announced it has added ISO 27001 certification to its robust data security program.
It’s Only Common Sense: Great Stories of Loving Your Customers
06/24/2024 | Dan Beaulieu -- Column: It's Only Common SenseGreat customer care goes far beyond great service. It means truly caring for your customers as if they are your closest family and friends. Consider what that means. Loving your customers is not just a lofty ideal but a fundamental principle for achieving sustained business success. When companies genuinely care for their customers as they would their own families, they go beyond merely satisfying needs; they create lasting relationships based on trust, loyalty, and mutual respect.