The War on Process Failure

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Who out there thought of it as a war? Is it? Well, we think it is—and a never-ending one at that. In fact, we thought it significant enough to devote all three of our August issues to the subject, because no matter how good you are or how great things are running, Murphy’s Law is right there, ready to take you down a peg or two—or worse. Think about it. You get one thing fixed or in line and something else pops up, just like the proverbial alligators in the swamp. And then, just as you have a handle on everything, specs change, controls tighten, a new customer comes on board, and there you are back at it again.

The subject of process failure turns out to be quite broad and affects essentially everyone in our industry, from the raw material suppliers to the circuit designer to the PCB processor to the assembly folks and on to the OEM. We all have a hand in it, both causing and solving problems and benefiting from solutions. Oh my!

We of course started with a survey to our general readership, which is rather broad. As expected, the survey takers covered the full spectrum, from supplier to OEM; even consultants chimed in (Table 1).

Company manufacturing volume was pretty evenly distributed between low, medium and high, with a few non-manufacturers. We also asked fabricators and assemblers where in their operation the most scrap was produced and surprisingly, it seems that every manufacturing area was prone to scrap. No areas stood out as especially scrap-prone.

Read the full article here.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the August 2015 issue of The PCB Magazine.