-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- smt007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueBox 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.
IPC APEX EXPO 2024 Pre-show
This month’s issue devotes its pages to a comprehensive preview of the IPC APEX EXPO 2024 event. Whether your role is technical or business, if you're new-to-the-industry or seasoned veteran, you'll find value throughout this program.
Boost Your Sales
Every part of your business can be evaluated as a process, including your sales funnel. Optimizing your selling process requires a coordinated effort between marketing and sales. In this issue, industry experts in marketing and sales offer their best advice on how to boost your sales efforts.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - smt007 Magazine
Traceability on the Line
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Traceability means many things to different facets of the electronics assembly market. To the capital equipment manufacturer, it often means incorporating value-added proprietary software capabilities that recognize, scan, and verify components on the assembly line. For EMS providers and contract manufacturers (CMs), it offers the ability to locate and troubleshoot failures before and after they hit the field. It may also lead to gaining additional customers in higher-reliability fields. For the OEM, traceability can reduce recalls and field failures, strengthening the bottom line.
Years ago, traceability focused mainly on high-reliability electronics - military, aerospace, defense, and medical applications. Not surprisingly, manufacturers of other products, such as high-end telecom applications that are expensive and performance-critical, have gained interest in tracking products on the line. “In our industry, the margins are so tight for CMs that, typically, they do only what is absolutely required by their customers - no more, no less,” says François Monette, co-president, marketing, Cogiscan, a tracking and traceability solutions provider. “And OEMs have been in a cost-reduction mode as well, which is evident in the migration of manufacturing to China.” Solid traceability during a product build can save costs down the line. This has been witnessed in recent costly product recalls of laptop batteries, cell phones, and game consoles. Having good traceabilty data frees manufacturers to recall only a limited number of products from the field if there’s a problem. “You have to invest a little bit more to gather the data during the manufacturing process, and you have to store the data,” adds Monette, “but if something goes wrong, you will recover your investment by having a limited recall. That can be very significant.” It’s all a matter of dollars and cents - and not if there will be a recall, but when, says Monette. Thorough traceability data will help to pinpoint the root cause of reliability problems.
“Traceability, traditionally, was necessary when manufacturing devices for government and medical; relatively low-volume, very sophisticated products,” says Michael Foster, GM, Dynatech/Samsung. Recently, adds Foster, automotive manufacturers have become more concerned with traceability as in-car electronics become more robust. “They’re getting out of their traditional thinking - simply setting up lines and punching out radios - to run somewhat flexible lines that manufacture a variety of products.” High-volume electronics are becoming more expensive to manufacture, meaning that mistakes are not dispensable anymore. “Losses weren’t as big in the past if they had a yield problem,” notes Foster. Automotive electronics manufacturers haven’t backed away from the volume requirement, but they’re doing smaller lot numbers with more changeover, and a lot more accountability and traceability.
Lead-free manufacturing was another significant driver in acquiring and maintaining traceability data and tighter process control. Manufacturers need traceability, and they need lead-free process verification for due diligence documentation - being able to prove and document that, to the best of their knowledge, they have manufactured a product with lead-free solder and parts according to the RoHS legislation.
To read the full article, see our January 23rd SMT Week e-newsletter, or search “Traceability on the Line” at smtonline.com.