PCB007 Magazine

PCB-Sept2017

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September 2017 • The PCB Magazine 19 ing our problems. Figure 3 outlines the three methods of experimentation that engineers have available. I was using the Design of Experi- ments–Factorial Designs. Statistics is the Number One Skill Statistics became to me the number one tool of a process engineer whose fundamental job is to make money for the company—which means you have to solve problems all the time or implement new equipment, new technology or new customers expediently with the highest yield possible. Over the years, as I managed the biggest printed circuit operation in the world, Foxconn (which had 32,000 employees, includ- ing 1700 engineers), I discovered that most of these Chinese engineers did not have the statis- tics background they needed to be effective pro- cess engineers for the seven big sites. Foxconn has about 30 million square feet of factory floor, making every kind of flex and multilayer, and chip-scale package you can imagine. The problems in manufacturing printed cir- cuits, even in large automated factories, are just as profound as they are in a quick-turn facility. So that's where I came up with the "25 Essential Skills" [1] . The first three chapters concern prob- lem solving, statistics, and design of experiments, which I still consider the number one tool. And it doesn't require a college degree—only about eighth grade algebra for its background. So, it's something that any person calling himself/her- self a process engineer could learn. That's why I wrote about the $15,000 NIST/ SEMATECH statistics package [2] that is available on the Internet from the U.S. government, free of charge. It's one of the best, and it's a self- paced tool. You don't want to print it out, as it's 3,800 pages, but it's all electronic and hy- pertext-linked. It helps you do your job because the eight sections are written for a working pro- cess engineer. It's not a statistics manual, but it's written by the best brains in statistics that are alive today. And I'm still flabbergasted that so few seem to know about it. I'm really pleased that I-Con- nect007 is making it more visible. This is some- thing you can download and keep at home. PCB PROCESS ENGINEERING: DETAILS FROM ONE OF THE ORIGINALS Figure 3: Of the three methods of experimentation available to process engineers, the complex environment of PCB fabrication favors the factorial design of DOE.

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