Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1038326
18 PCB007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2018 Stepinski: We're willing to step back and think about it. If you look at the machine that man- ages in-between processes, it's not an out- landish machine. It has a couple of readers built in it—nothing special—but people can't figure it out for some reason that you have to put a code on that you can read all the way through the build process. How do we do this? Just think it through. What is this step going to do to the code? Maybe I should change it a little bit. Then, what kind of read - er do I need? Next, call the company that makes the readers and test them all to deter- mine which you want. I might need a differ- ent read on two machines because it doesn't work on them. Ours was the first request of this kind. We found that, in a lot of cases, other fabs weren't even trying to do things like this. You need to determine what is important for the process. How do I track it on this machine? How do I do it on my own as much as I can? Then, it's not very expensive at all. It's very cost effective to do these things. Matties: Earlier, in your office, we were talking about data. You have overwhelming amounts of data, which means you have to be smart about the data that you decide you need. Stepinski: Yes, we only collect what is essential. Matties: How do you determine that? Stepinski: Talk to your suppliers and custom- ers and identify all of the critical variables. Then make a first pass: "Here are the things that I want to collect." As you go along and find something else that you want to add to the control, add it. Maybe you'll want to take something away, but usually, you add. It's that simple. You don't need to qualify every variable as if no one has ever built a PCB be- fore. Use existing expertise. That is what I did when I designed this facility. I traveled the world for months and talked to dozens of board shops and suppliers all over the world to find all of the best ideas. It's all consolidated in this one site. Matties: It's definitely a showcase, and you're transitioning from a captive shop to a job shop. What was the motivation to do that? Stepinski: The return on investment from the original shop, plus the response we received from potential outside customers. We decided to open up the shop based on a lot of research showing that moving forward into advanced Figure 5: One unique piece of equipment in the line is this film peeler Alex sourced out of China.