Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/255022
62 The PCB Magazine • February 2014 compli! Having said that, I know that for you to trust a model I built (or anyone else built, for that matter), you would have to be able to understand it, watch it, and change it to any scenario you could dream up. And it had to be as easy as running a "what if" analysis with a spreadsheet. To help build your trust further that our factories can be modeled, here is a link to a YouTube video of the PCB Customized Fac- tory Model. One of the more complex operations to model in our factories is lamination, and here's why. Each job has a certain lot size. Because of the variety of materials and board designs, an increasing number of press cycles have to be spawned. This, along with the fact that our presses have different numbers of openings and the panels we build have different thicknesses, means there are varying numbers of panels that can be in a book and thus there are varying numbers of panels that can be in a press load. Specifically, jobs have to be split up into panels, combined using very precise rules into books, and then these books combined very precisely into a press load where they all must have the same press recipe or cycle. This recombination of materials and rules establishes the varying distribution of product across all of the presses that is impossible to see and comprehend dy- namically, using a spread sheet. After the lami- ARE BORINGLy PREDICTABLE OPERATIONS POSSIBLE? continues table 1: the composition of product sitting at layup at a specific moment in time.