Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1284035
32 SMT007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2020 Steiner: Communica- tion is king. The worst case is having some- thing that needs to be asked or mentioned and it isn't happening, or if you're working at long distances, communica- tion is often in a sec- ond language and sent through PowerPoints and emails. The ability to stroll over and take a look at what's going on is really nice. We don't just invade their operation, but at any given time, a question may come up, and we can look and participate. Johnson: Do you have any projects for which you use an open job shop? Or when you scale up into full-scale production quantities, are you moving outside of the EMS providers in- house? Steiner: No, not currently. We have to evalu- ate as we go. Markets and geopolitical climates change over time. As we are all aware now, in a global pandemic, we ask whether we are doing the right things. They're set up to go from NPI activity right into production at our EMS partners. Our various products run any- where from 50,000 units a year up to millions of units a year, so they're not small operations. The only thing that we do on the open mar- ket is development and prototype as a quick turn. And as any engineer knows, you'd go anywhere to get that quick turn done and save the day. The development stuff we do early on is usually done in the quickest we can get it. Having quick-turn access to prototype assem- bly helps keep us nimble and flexible to chang- ing demands. As early as possible, we want to run our development stuff down our intended production line. We'll schedule for that and make sure that before we start going through our release gates, we've already run our prod- uct down the line to verify it's going to be suc- cessful. lished practices like I am promoting. As far as the management of product quality, we have indus- try standards our custom- ers measure our products by. With good results at the factory, it's difficult to measure the ROI on the enhanced efforts we go through, but it definitely contributes. Johnson: Do you find that your design require- ments drive your EMS providers to change their capabilities? Steiner: At CASCO Novi, we design power inverters. Power inverters have to handle a lot of power. We design automotive DC-AC power inverters that take 12-, 24-, or 48-volt DC volt- age, and from that, produce 110- or 230-volt AC output. Some of the units we have need to go above 2,000 W (two kilowatts). That is a lot of power to process. We have some copper areas onboard that handle in excess of 100 amps. Getting the components to be able to conduct that much power and make them solderable at the same time is a big chal- lenge. A specific example is that for cost rea- sons, we would normally like to wave sol- der. For through-hole devices, it's a low-cost option, but we can't always do that. We some- times need to go to selective soldering instead, where we can put the dwell time and tempera- ture exactly where we need it to get particular joints adequately heated and produce a qual- ity solder joint. There is a lot of learning that goes on in that kind of situation. Johnson: It sounds like the fact that you have your EMS providers so close to your design team, physically in the same building, is pretty important to the success here. It would seem to me that if you were working with vendors who were more at a distance—an open job shop, if you will—it would not be as open or detailed.