Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1000349
16 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2018 Feature by Stephen Las Marias I-CONNECT007 This month's issue of SMT007 Magazine looks into electronics assembly best prac- tices that help optimize our manufacturing processes. For starters, we interviewed two assembly experts: Jason Keeping of EMS firm Celestica, and Bob Willis, a renowned EMS consultant and trainer. Keeping is a member of Celestica's Corporate Technology department. Within Celestica, he is the subject matter expert on ruggedization, which includes all of the different processes around assembly cleaning, underfill, conformal coating, and plotting—"the stuff that you need to do to make things last in harsh environmental conditions." He is also the chairman of the Aero - space Hub for Canada's Education Program, as well as the president of SMTA Ontario. Recently, Keeping just became the chairman of the IPC 5-30 Segment, which covers most of the technologies and standards for cleaning and coating. Willis, meanwhile, started his career as a young engineer at GEC Marconi in assembly and PCB manufacture. He then went into research with GEC Marconi, now BAE Systems, and then into contract manufacturing for a couple of years. Within these companies, Willis did fail - ure analysis, training provider in the company, surface mount assembly and environmental testing. For about 40 years now, he has been running his own business doing training consul - tancy worldwide, a majority of which is now online with webinars, which he does for a lot of corporate companies as well as the technical sector such as the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), SMART Group, SMTA, and others. Stephen Las Marias: From your perspective, Jason, what are some of the biggest challenges that you can think of in electronics assembly when it comes to the human factor, equip- ment, and manufacturing technology? Jason Keeping: The biggest challenge, I think, for the human factor is a lot of global work with a transition to lower-cost geographies. The retention is not as long as a lot of our tradi- tional higher-cost geographies, so as you try Practicing Best Practices Jason Keeping