Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1040234
26 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2018 Taylor: Andy and I met while we were working at Sanmina. Andy worked in the NPI group, and I was in front-end engineering. Andy also worked at Sanmina in other positions, includ- ing in the front-end for a while. Schilloff: I have experienced both process and product engineering over a long period of time, which helped me be effective in the NPI group. I've also had experience working for i3 Electronics most recently for a little over two and a half years, and Alex has been build - ing up the crew here to move forward with everything that's happening at GreenSource, and he asked me to come on board. It was definitely the thing to do. Taylor: In this office, we have eight CAM and product engi- neering personnel. There is also a customer service rep and sales manager located here. We have three people in Phoenix, and we're currently adding three more. We're also going to be adding another person to the New York office. We'll have 15 total CAM product engineer personnel working remotely. Shaughnessy: Andy, what's your title? Schilloff: I'm the lead product engineer, so I deal more with the customer stuff and NPI— things that we haven't come across yet until our capabilities are well established. I'm also a principal engineer. Capability-wise, I'm a good interface between process engineering and the plant by enabling people who work remotely to get the data to where it needs to be. Alex has talked about turn times being much less than what's standard at i3 Electronics, for example, where it might take 10 weeks to build a part. We're going to do it in three weeks, so a part of that has to be an efficient front end, which will be a challenge. Shaughnessy: Where are you located now? Taylor: Owego, New York. Shaughnessy: Sure, near Sanmina. So right now, you all haven't gone commercial yet offi- cially, so primarily what you're doing is in- house captive work, the Whelen work. Taylor: Correct. We're setting up for the com- mercial work. Shaughnessy: What are you doing to get ready for this? Taylor: We purchased all new software, so we've been busy for the last year configuring our CAM and engineering software. We went to Ucamco for CAM software, and we've spent this year configuring that. We use a system called Bacon from Bacon Software, which is going to be our enterprise resource plan - ning (ERP) system. It is also our engineering system for travelers, process loads, etc. We will not have any paper travelers. It will all be built on barcode readers, and I believe there are 82 dif - ferent barcode readers. Every barcode reader will equate to an operation on the traveler. Shaughnessy: We took the tour with Alex, he pointed out all these barcode readers. You'll all be able to trigger a job from off-site without touching the board, right? Taylor: Yes, it's all remote. All the data is stored at the plant, not off-site. We physically log in to the plant to work. Shaughnessy: Wow. Are any other companies following this model with CAM people work- ing off-site? Taylor: When we all worked at Sanmina, we did have remote tooling. We had 11 people in Phoenix at that time who worked remotely for four or five years until they closed it down. We spent a lot of effort making that work, and JanNell Taylor