Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1000349
30 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2018 to talk to the people doing the work, seeing the problem. They may not know about the intri- cacies of the materials they use and the coat- ing, the solder paste, etc., but they know stuff, they see stuff. As long as you can then inter- pret what they see and see what has changed or what material isn't appropriate, etc. They have the ability to tell us and do our job for us. We've just got to interpret that information and to some extent that's what we engineers do with data. They take SPC data, AOI data, they interpret it and then they can solve problems. We're using information both verbal and data to solve a problem. As long as we continue to do that and just don't ignore people or ignore data, then we'll have a more robust process. Finally, taking that information and making sure that we don't have the same mistake again and again and again, which is another bugbear. Las Marias: Right, I remember when I was in this EMS facility in the Philippines. The management is saying that they have to talk to the operators in the line because those are the people who are really seeing what's happen- ing, and they're experiencing those troubles and those issues. Definitely, their inputs have to be considered as well when it comes to analyzing what went wrong or what improve- ments they need to make. Willis: I love training people on the shop floor, the hands-on stuff, because they are more demanding than any engineer I've ever trained. Because they want to know how to do it, they want to know how to do it better, to make everybody else happy. If you can get that sort of reaction with people that's abso- lutely fabulous because they're there to do a job. They may not have the same skill sets as other people in the factory but they are in most instances very eager to learn. If you can put the information in a nicely understandable package for people but it shows them, it doesn't just talk at them, because there are loads of people out there who can tell you what to do but they can't actually show you what to do. That's what they want because they'll see through you. If I went on to the floor and did something and said do this, do that, but I actually didn't know what I was talking about. That happens occasionally, but they would see through you. They would say that stuff won't go through that hole. That material won't flow like that. So as long as you