11-18-2022

Good leadership always makes a difference; unfortunately, so does bad leadership. This leadership truth continues as we will be talking about law 20 of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Referencing my past articles on the prior 19 laws, do you remember the difference between a manager and a leader? A manager does what’s right, a leader does the right thing. There is a corollary with the above quote and the manager/leader discussion in that they are both about taking your leadership to the next level. Another recurring theme across the leadership laws is the concept that developing leadership skills in those you lead is the fastest way to improve your leadership skills.

10-14-2022

Good leadership always makes a difference; unfortunately, so does bad leadership. This leadership truth continues as we will be talking about law 19 of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. How often have we heard that timing is everything throughout our lives? Too often to count I would suggest. We don’t have to look very far to find examples of both good timing and bad timing. In the context of leadership, there are really only four outcomes for any decision and the first three are a result of poor timing.

05-10-2022

If you truly want to become a great leader you must be willing to make sacrifices. There are four rules to keep in mind to this end: There is no success without sacrifice. Leaders are often asked to give up more than others. You must keep giving up to stay up. The higher the level of leadership, the greater the sacrifice needed. Do you agree with these? Read on for more details.

04-07-2022

There are three questions to ask yourself to understand the Law of Priorities that must be embraced during the journey to become a great leader: What is required that only I can do? What gives the greatest return? What brings the greatest reward? Let's dig in and discover how to embrace these principles in your leadership.

03-02-2022

Good leadership always makes a difference; unfortunately, so does bad leadership. This leadership truth continues as we will be talking about law 15 and 16 of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Great leaders are committed to victory and make things happen, period. One of the most enduring mantras in leadership is “Never ask a follower to do something you are not willing to do yourself.”

02-03-2022

Good leadership always makes a difference; unfortunately, so does bad leadership. This leadership truth continues as we will be talking about laws 13 and 14 of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. I am sure that everyone remembers the childhood phrase “Monkey see, monkey do.” When boiled down this is exactly what the Law of the Picture teaches. As with most of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, they play off very basic human nature attributes; in this case it is the tendency of people to mimic the behaviors of their leaders. When a leader demonstrates behaviors that lead to success, people follow. But the same is true when a leader demonstrates bad behaviors. So, how do you take measure of yourself?

10-28-2021

Good leadership always makes a difference; unfortunately, so does bad leadership. This leadership truth continues as we will be talking about the12th of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, which states that only secure leaders give their power to others.

09-28-2021

Good leadership always makes a difference; unfortunately, so does bad leadership. This leadership truth continues as we will be talking about the 11th of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

08-30-2021

Good leadership always makes a difference; unfortunately, so does bad leadership. This leadership truth continues as we will be talking about the10th of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: When people speak, leaders listen.

08-02-2021

Good leadership always makes a difference; unfortunately, so does bad leadership. This leadership truth continues as we will be talking about the seventh, eighth and ninth of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

06-24-2021

Good leadership always makes a difference; unfortunately, so does bad leadership. This leadership truth continues as we will be talking about the fourth and fifth of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

05-25-2021

Good leadership always makes a difference; unfortunately, so does bad leadership. This leadership truth continues as we will be talking about the third of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, The Law of Process.

04-27-2021

Good leadership always makes a difference; unfortunately, so does bad leadership. This leadership truth continues as we will be talking about the xecond of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, The Law of Influence.

02-18-2021

In this second installment of Leadership 101, it is wise to review the premise of this series: Good leadership always makes a difference; unfortunately, so does bad leadership. Here, Steve Williams discusses the first of 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, The Law of the Lid.

01-27-2021

Good leadership always makes a difference; unfortunately, so does bad leadership. Leadership is not easy to learn; if it was, everyone would be a leader. This Leadership 101 series will provide practical leadership tools and principles that can be applied immediately with your team.

12-31-2020

While documentation is often viewed as a necessary evil, it is a very important aspect of any quality system but needs to be functional. In Part 2 of this series, Steve Williams concludes with more tips and techniques to simplify and streamline your QMS documentation.

11-24-2020

While documentation is often viewed as a necessary evil, it is a very important aspect of any quality system but needs to be functional. The documentation system needs to be lean, mean, and user-friendly to the workforce. Steve Wiliams describes the KISS Principle: Keep it simple, Steve.

09-01-2020

Countless books have been written about the great leaders throughout history who have served as role models for generations of business executives. But what about the lessons that can be learned from the names you won’t typically find in the business section of your local bookstore? Steve Williams discusses leadership lessons he learned from Sonny Barger.

07-27-2020

Concluding Steve Williams' four-part series on “Guerilla Tactics to Pass Any QMS Audit,” he shares Tactic 10 on techniques to reverse a finding.

06-29-2020

Continuing the series, “Guerilla Tactics to Pass Any QMS Audit,” Steve Williams shares Tactic 9, which includes documentation tips to avoid audit "dings."

06-09-2020

Steve Williams captures his perspective on COVID-19 changes and shares his top five reasons why he is over the "new normal" based on his experiences over the last few weeks, indicating what the near future is going to look like.

05-26-2020

Continuing March’s Part 1 column on “Guerilla Tactics to Pass Any QMS Audit,” Steve Williams covers tactics 5–8 and hopes you find a number of solid strategies you can apply immediately to improve your audit success.

03-25-2020

"Guerrilla tactics" was chosen as the name for this series to reflect a number of nontraditional, take-no-prisoner concepts, techniques, and tactics that were born in the quality trenches and will guide any company to a successful audit result. In Part 1, Steve Williams covers four tactics to pass any QMS audit.

02-15-2020

This column continues the series of installments, each highlighting one of the seven founding fathers of quality (as selected by the author). It is important to understand and acknowledge their revolutionary contributions that still form the foundation of modern quality practices.

01-18-2020

This column continues the series of installments, each highlighting one of the seven founding fathers of quality (as selected by the author). It is important to understand and acknowledge their revolutionary contributions that still form the foundation of modern quality practices.

12-26-2019

This column begins a series of seven installments, each highlighting one of the seven founding fathers of quality (as selected by the author). Steve Williams explains why it is important to understand and acknowledge their revolutionary contributions that still form the foundation of modern quality practices.

12-13-2019

How do you overcome resistance and gain employee buy-in when implementing a new initiative, especially one that is generally seen as dry and boring, such as a quality management system? Follow Law 2 from Quality 101 Handbook: The Biggest Little Book on Quality You’ll Ever Need. For the sake of continuity, Law 1 states, “Never fear an unexpected customer visit.” If every employee lives and breathes the quality system every day, there will never be a need for an audit-prep panic. In this column, I will focus on Law 2.

09-16-2019

I recently spoke with Van Chiem, a process engineer with Prototron Circuits, about developing in-house flex and rigid-flex processes and capabilities at their facility in Tucson, Arizona.

07-30-2019

Van Chiem, a process engineer with Prototron Circuits, recently spoke with Steve Williams about developing in-house flex and rigid-flex processes and capabilities at their facility in Tucson, Arizona.

06-07-2019

In six short years, millennials will make up around 50% of the global working population. With our ever-increasing culture of information overload since the mobile revolution began, attention spans have been shrinking. While millennials seem to be the subject of much of the reporting on Digital-Age attention spans, the effect can be seen across all age ranges. How can you train anyone in this environment? Read on.

04-18-2019

While M2M and H2M connectivity are the primary focus of Industry 4.0, the true underlying benefit of Industry 4.0 comes in the form of machine-to-business (M2B) connectivity or the "machine-as-a-service" concept. This is changing the way we purchase equipment.

03-01-2019

The last few IPC APEX EXPO events have focused heavily on Industry 4.0, which is all about the Internet of Things (IoT), automation, and data exchange between machines.

02-06-2019

Today, most of us have used some kind of wearable device to monitor our steps, exercise, heart rate, etc. However, as an eight-year-old watching Star Trek with my dad and younger brother in the late 1960s, this wearable technology would have been thought to be crazy.

10-30-2018

Global sourcing is a complex process and choosing a supplier is always an important decision. The higher the technology, the more important the process for choosing the right one. Considering the highly complicated process of manufacturing printed circuit boards, these guidelines will assist in your decision.

07-17-2018

As our industry continues to evolve and shape-shift, printed circuit board manufacturing continues to shrink through consolidations and attrition. Unfortunately, this trend will most likely continue, albeit at a slower pace than over the last decade. In what has truly become a global economy, partnering with worldclass suppliers is mandatory, and excluding a sub-set of this dwindling supply base because they also happen to be in a crossover business will severely hinder this effort.

05-22-2018

While this list is not all-inclusive, it will give organizations an idea of what they are signing up for by pursuing IATF 16949 QMS certification. The standard is very demanding and requires a high level of discipline, but as they say, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger!”

05-04-2018

I have been on the record for the past 10 years saying that jobs we lost overseas may move out of China to a new low-cost country, but they were never coming back. I have never been happier to be wrong! I talk to a lot of CEOs, and the first question I ask is, “How’s business?” The answers are overwhelmingly positive, and it is clear that their optimism is at a level not seen for over a decade. America as a low-cost country. Think about that.

02-16-2018

No matter where my travels take me, I hear a wide and limitless supply of excuses for why Lean will not work in “my” organization. One of my favorite ways of illustrating that Lean will indeed work anywhere is to take a Lean look at a very unlikely organization, Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

01-03-2018

Any major initiative, whether implementing ISO, lean manufacturing or introducing a new product, requires culture change. How this change is managed will be the difference between success or failure of the project. This column will offer some fundamental elements that will help navigate your next major implementation by shifting the culture.

11-14-2017

Being a quality professional today is nothing like it was 20 or 25 years ago; on a personal level, I can attest to this fact. It is no longer adequate to appoint a quality manager simply based on a person’s command of acceptance criteria and industry specifications; in the 21st century, a truly hybrid executive is needed.

10-02-2017

Change is a given. While this adage may be quite true and normally a good thing, it can wreak process engineering havoc in a printed circuit operation. Change is good, but the operative word is controlled change relative to the complex processes involved in manufacturing a printed circuit board.

06-23-2017

“When did this happen?” I asked myself during a recent visit to my men’s only barber shop as I noticed that my $10 haircut was now $14. While I vaguely remember the price going up a little every couple of years, I really hadn’t been paying attention. This caused me to revisit an article I wrote 10 years ago and research whether this 40% cost increase was reasonable.

05-10-2017

Owners of printed circuit board shops across the country are united in their top concern for their businesses: finding new talent. While this problem crosses all industries, what is unique is the complexity and learning curve of our business.

02-22-2017

Regardless of which side of the political fence you fall on, what matters most around any election are the policy implications. Taking the partisanship out of politics and looking strictly at the Trump policy promises, there is cause for optimism in business.

10-20-2016

I have been in leadership positions for the majority of my 40-year career, but it has not always been a smooth and natural relationship. With the following three stories, I will attempt to share the lessons learned on my journey as a lifelong student in pursuit of the art of leadership.

10-06-2016

Unless you are currently building aerospace product to AS9100[1] you are probably saying, “What the heck is FOD?” What started out as a requirement to prevent damage to aircraft parts such as engines has been flowed down to any component or assembly including PCBs.

06-08-2016

In March, at the 2016 IPC APEX EXPO show in Las Vegas, the next big thing everyone was talking about was the Internet of Things (IoT). Equipment manufacturers were standing in line to tout their machines as IoT-capable and just waiting for the industry to catch up. But the IoT has been at play in our personal lives for quite a while…

05-19-2016

Handling is often the source of many pain points for PCB fabricators, resulting in rework, scrap and customer returns. Quick & Easy 6S is a fantastic tool to minimize handling risk by reducing product travel and improving shop cleanliness.

04-29-2016

One of the fascinating things about Best Practices is that it is occurring everywhere—and many times without the knowledge of the person or organization doing it! How can this be? Most best practice principles fall under a very old-fashioned ideal that some of us still remember: common sense.

04-19-2016

Identifying and fixing problems instead of foolishly trying to “inspect in quality” by sorting will have a greater impact on profit than raising prices your product, hammering your suppliers for lower costs or most any other traditional profit enhancement initiatives an organization can implement.

11-30-2015

Many companies get caught in data traps. They focus so heavily on cost and survival that they end up using data as merely a marketing and sales tool. In doing so, they fail to realize the true power of data: It can transform every aspect of a business.

10-27-2015

Lean, theory of constraints, quick response manufacturing, cross training, and SPC are powerful, tried and true methodologies for process improvement--but they are rooted in high-volume manufacturing environments and don't always play nice in a high-mix, low-volume operation. This article talks about the new WORK manufacturing strategy specifically developed to overcome these shortcomings while capitalizing on their strengths.

10-05-2015

You could say that today's automobile is a "computer on wheels," but from a point of accuracy it would be more like 35 computers on wheels. With printed circuit boards being the backbone of our electronic products, this is major market segment for our industry. In this article, Steve Williams writes about the evolution of automotive electronics, and the future of the industry.

07-28-2015

The shift away from vertical integration has pushed the topic of supply chain management to the forefront of strategic planning for many manufacturers. This wide-ranging article talks about supply chain management, a brief history of supply chain innovation, managing supply chain risk, as well as presents the "7 Rights" of supply chain management.

05-26-2015

One roadblock to achieving the true benefits of best practices is that traditional improvement efforts have always focused on reducing the time of value-added steps; in other words, reducing the amount of time it takes to do something to a product, or touch time.

04-06-2015

Not every process is a good candidate for statistical control, and that in these instances, alternate process control methods may be required. Steven Williams talks about continuous improvement when it comes to process capability.

11-30-2014

Close to 50 years after Dr. Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy of the Starship Enterprise first used a fictional tricorder to scan patients for ailments and anomalies, real-world medical science is turning that science fiction into a reality.

11-23-2014

"Looking back through the annals of the U.S. PCB industry, when it comes to quality, we have evolved from a reactive, to a proactive mindset. This evolution has led to what is loosely called the zero-defects methodology. The old gold standard of three sigma is no longer acceptable and has gone the way of the dinosaur," writes Columnist Steve Williams.

10-16-2014

Columnist Steve Williams writes, "Fresh out of training, the value stream mapping (VSM) team often runs out and starts mapping the first process they see. While VSM, if anything, is better than nothing, efforts should be focused on the critical processes having the greatest impact on the product."

09-09-2014

Process flow diagrams are a great first step, but they don't tell the entire story. Value stream maps add one critical ingredient that standard process flowcharts don't have: Time. Process flowcharts do not capture this important element. They simply present a snapshot of the sequence of steps in the process. Time is essential to understanding how one operation affects another and where your resources are being spent.

07-17-2014

In the global economy that is today's business environment, there are no guarantees. The need for best practices is present in every industry, but mandatory in technology industries such as PCB manufacturing. In this new series, Columnist Steve Williams conveys personal lessons gained through his involvement with more than 1,000 manufacturing companies.

05-29-2014

What does it mean to be world-class? It means being on par with the top performers globally in your chosen craft. There are, of course, numerous quantitative metrics used to measure this, such as turnover, quality certifications, productivity, and the requisite financial ratios. But perhaps the most important metric is qualitative: How do your customers think you're doing?

04-03-2014

Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, made the following salient proclamation more than 50 years ago: "It's all to do with the training: You can do a lot if you're properly trained." What has held true through the ages is not a secret; people perform better when properly trained.

02-20-2014

In the drive to continuous improvement, while Lean is one of the most powerful tools available to organizations, it is also one of the most underutilized. Columnist Steve Williams offers a primer for companies considering the Lean journey.

01-10-2014

After a very challenging year for the domestic PCB industry, global business conditions are slowly improving. Columnist Steve Williams takes a look back at 2013 and also looks forward to what we can expect for the rest of 2014.

12-12-2013

New blood, a fresh set of eyes, or an outside perspective: No matter what you call it, the right consultant can add exponential value to any organization. How can you make sure you choose the right consultant and avoid the wrong one?

11-14-2013

In September of last year, columnist Steve Williams wrote about the potential of 3D printing to "save" American manufacturing, as it was quickly becoming the new industry buzzword. Fast forward a year and it is clear that 3D printing may be here to stay and not just another passing fad.

10-13-2013

Change is a given. While this adage may be quite true and normally a good thing, it can cause havoc in the documentation system of a printed circuit operation. To be successful, there must be a formal methodology to handle process change.

08-23-2013

Columnist Steve Williams writes, "It occurred to me after reading an article in a local paper recently that solid management fundamentals are timeless and cross all industries. It is critical that an organization have a foundation based on a practical management game plan to be in the chase for excellence."

08-07-2013

Continuous improvement is a journey, and as with most things worthwhile, needs to be an integral part of an organization's everyday life. It can only come from people, motivated and committed, learning what they can learn, solving problems that they can solve, and implementing solutions that they develop.

07-03-2013

Mel Gibson was able to read women's minds in the movie "What Women Want." Columnist Steve Williams, on the other hand, believes that he can offer guidance on what customers want.

06-14-2013

One of the most powerful tools in the operational improvement toolbox is not something you can put your hands around, but, if mastered, it can take organizational performance to a new level. Highly-effective teams can make the difference between step function improvement and abject failure.

12-01-2012

More than 50 years ago, American industry rejected the manufacturing tools and techniques of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, while most of Asia welcomed and ran with this guidance. While this has slowly changed, a couple of important concepts still have not been embraced here in the U.S.

11-08-2012

It is worth taking a look back at the span of six years, and the regulatory implications to our industry stemming from one regulation that has impacted the electronics industry in a mighty big way: RoHS.

10-11-2012

3D printing is a hot topic right now, especially with equipment prices dropping and reports of this incredible technology entering the consumer marketplace. With its origin in the additive process of PCB manufacturing, will this technology save American manufacturing?

03-08-2012

As we all look to improve our manufacturing organizations in 2012 and become leaner and meaner, the fictitious canoe story is a reminder to focus on the right things and concentrate on activities that will improve the bottom line.