Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Maggie Benson's Journey: What is Your Uptime?

Editor’s note: Indium Corporation’s Ron Lasky continues this series of columns about Maggie Benson, a fictional character and her company BE, to demonstrate continuous improvement and education in SMT assembly.

Maggie was never interested in things like makeup and dresses. Instead, she preferred to spend her time playing sports like basketball, baseball, football, and especially golf. Needless to say, Maggie was thrilled when her mother and John’s mother agreed to take the lead on planning Maggie and John’s wedding. She was also thrilled that her parents approved of John as a future son-in-law, and John’s parents approved of her as a future daughter-in-law. While thinking these pleasant thoughts in her office at BE, she remembered she had a meeting coming up in just a few minutes.

After Frank Emory’s measurement that line uptime was only 15%, Maggie and John decided that increasing uptime was now an emergency. They chatted with BE’s lead technician, Chuck Tower. Chuck was 6 feet 5 inches tall and all of his co-workers called him “The Tower.” Chuck had worked for BE for  years and seemed to Maggie and John to just be “with it.” Maggie set up a meeting for the three of them.

“Chuck, you did the best on the SMT 101 test: nine out of 10. Nice work!” John exclaimed.

“Thanks, Mr. Jennings,” Chuck responded.

“It’s John,” John replied. “Remember, we are a team.”

As they began their discussion, Maggie explained that uptime was simply the percent of time that the lines were running.

“Chuck, what do you think our line uptime is?” Maggie asked.

“I’d like to think it was really high, but I’m assuming it must be low since you are asking. Is it about 50%?” Chuck asked.

“Frank gets about 15%,” John said.

Chuck turned pale. “That’s embarrassing,” Chuck groaned. “But how about we try to measure it as precisely as possible.”

“How do you propose doing that?” Maggie asked.

“The junior techs and I will monitor the lines every half hour,” Chuck explained. “If the line is running, we will put a ‘1’ in an Excel spreadsheet cell; if the line is not running, we will put enter a ‘0.’ Let’s do it for two weeks and see what we get.”

Maggie and John were impressed. They then discussed with Chuck how BE did changeovers. Handling changeovers was important as BE was a high-mix business, and some of their product runs were less than 100 PCBs. The following points were made:

Strengths

1. Each line had three white boards on which the operators would write the status of preparation for the components, stencil, solder paste, etc., for the next three jobs on the line.

Opportunities for Improvement (OFI)

1. Feeder racks, though available, were not used. They were in storage, and there was never time to learn how to use them.
2. Even with the white boards, there was usually “shopping time” required to locate a needed component or a stencil.
3. There was not a sense of urgency regarding replenishing solder paste or components on feeders. Often when these actions were needed, the operators would use this time to take a break, hence stopping the line.
4. The lines were shut down for the 30-minute lunch hour, but the actual time the line was down was much more than 30 minutes.

After discussing all of this, Chuck was despondent.

“I’m embarrassed that I thought the uptime might be in the 50% range,” Chuck lamented. “Clearly, with all of these OFIs, Frank’s number is probably more accurate.”

“Don’t feel too bad, Chuck,” Maggie said, sympathetically. “Professor Coleman has told us that most people think their line uptime is high; sometimes they think it is 95%, when it is actually only 10%.”

“When you think about it, the line running is the only thing that makes us money. If our uptime is poor, we are losing our shirt, money-wise,” Chuck noted.

With that statement, Maggie and John knew that Chuck Tower would be a key person in the drive for continuous improvement.

Stay tuned to see what BE’s uptime is.

What is your uptime?

This column originally appeared in the August 2021 issue of SMT007 Magazine.