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PCB007-June2020

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JUNE 2020 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 33 times; only after that, will change be adopted from a top-down. The president of HP taught the LUTI method to all the vice presidents, and all the vice presi- dents used it with all the directors, and all the directors did it from the top down. Everybody had to go through it four times, and then it fi- nally stuck, but doing it once for engineers or operators never went anywhere. It goes all the way down to the individual worker. Today, nobody talks much about Malcolm Baldrige, Deming, Juran, or Crosby, which shouldn't have happened; they should be im- mortalized or institutionalized. In my list of 24 essential skills for engineers, Lean, Six Sigma, TQM, and problem-solving are the most im- portant things an engineer can learn and have in their toolsets. Williams: Yes. The second most frequent thing I run across in companies is they don't know how to problem-solve. They don't know how to do the root-cause analysis, and they can't permanently get rid of a problem because they don't have or want to learn that skill set. Holden: I visit Michigan Tech on occasion, and every time I go, we have refresher courses on statistics, design of experiments, Six Sigma, TQM, and problem-solving for their engineers and technicians to keep re-exposing these con- cepts because they take a while to sink in. Williams: I completely agree. Holden: Barry is always telling us it's not enough to be good; we have to be great. And if we ever think we are there, then we've missed the whole point of the exercise. We can always be better. Matties: Right. I've referred back to this nu- merous times lately, but recently, I interviewed Frank Lorentz from Ventec in Europe, who came to the company without any industry ex- perience. He was from the newspaper industry, but his expertise was logistics. He came in and turned the thinking around completely. At one point, they thought that they needed to rent another facility to have enough room for their equipment. He came in, and the first thing he did was benchmark it. Then, he looked at flow and rearranged the equipment into the right flow. Not only did they not need another facility, but they had added floor space for expansion of the current facility. They drove cost down and quality up, and he was looking at things like not shipping the prepreg on Thursday be- cause it would sit on the truck over the week- end without being able to control the temper- ature; instead, ship prepreg on a Monday or Tuesday. He brought that kind of change in thinking. Thus, are we not hiring the right people? Are we trying to hire industry talent rather than lo- gistics expertise? Williams: We are. And it's also about hiring the right people with the right mindset. That's a good way to start changing the way people think. Matties: Not only did he start benchmarking, but he came in and created a culture of quality, which meant empowerment, communication, and listening, which will translate into suc- cess. This is the distribution sector for Ventec. As Frank said in the interview, in the newspa- per business, if you are a day late with your product, then it's only good for wrapping fish. He brought that kind of EQ to laminate distri- bution. Williams: Absolutely. Why is this endemic to the PCB industry? I work with injection-mold- ed plastic companies and metal fabrication companies. If a customer orders 100 pieces, they build 100 pieces; they don't build 110, 115, or 120. If they scrap out one piece, it's a major ordeal. We don't have that mentality in the board business. Matties: Because even overage is profit shar- ing. Williams: It is, and that's built into the price. The customer pays for it one way or the other.

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