Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1284035
34 SMT007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2020 ual product is designed by groups like yourself. They select the materials, the fabricator, and the assembler. When you put it all together, is it going to work sitting in the Arizona sun or last through the winter in Alaska or Finland? Automotive stuff can be long-lived, and some of the products that we designed were anti-col- lision and safety systems, and if they have to be replaced out of warranty, they're a $2,000 replacement. You can imagine how unhappy the customers are when five years after they bought the vehicle they have a $2,000 replacement. I took it seriously when they said they design a product that's going to last 15 years. And they had the environmental buildings and environ- mental chambers to take their products and put them through the accelerated testing that would indicate 15 years in terrible conditions., as well as sites in Arizona and other places where they stake things out, power them up, and sit there with 15 years' worth of inventory in day-to-day conditions. Steiner: Happy mentioned taking products out into Arizona and things to do with the entire automotive environment, it's got to be one of the harshest things because you never know where the vehicle will spend its life. Is this going to Siberia, or is this going to the Sahara? Those are opposite ends of the temperature spectrum, and it affects the PCBs in different ways. But one of the things I learned at my for- mer employer was that cleanliness on a PCB is something that you need to maintain a grip on. Whether it's sulfur gases, salt, temperature extremes, or combinations of those, you either have ways to control the cleanliness and pro- tect the surfaces or, sooner or later, you are going to have early life failure problems in your product. I have focused an enormous amount of energy within the last 10 years, ensuring that we have the ability to test specific areas on our electronic assemblies and understand what the cleanliness level is. Not doing that can quickly lead to recalls. There is a particular event that happened when I was with a door lock company that really opened my eyes to the fact that solder- ing residues are an outright enemy of good Happy Holden: When I joined an automo- tive supplier, I asked their design manager, "What's the operating life for the products?" They said, "15–17 years, which is well beyond the warranty period." I said, "Great. Can I look over the data on your fabricator's components in assembly and materials, indicating that they're capable of that?" They didn't have any- thing. Indirectly, I brought up, "How do you know you're designing for 15–17 years?" They responded, "We don't see any products com- ing back." I pointed out, "After the warranty, it is difficult to get products back that may have failed." I started looking into the basics of having 15-year reliability. For some of their customers, any kind of field failure required them to jump through an infinite number of hoops to find the root cause. I was surprised to find that some of their fabricators and some of their materi- als were a three- or four-year life. They didn't have a 15-year life, and those were dropped and replaced with the appropriate capability. When you're doing manufacturing reliability, what does that mean from a design manager's point of view? Steiner: I'm not a design manager myself. I enable the engineers to be successful in work- ing with our engineering management and design managers. It's not exactly a question for me, but you have to get the right tools to the right people with the right requirements. That comment about 15–17 years is strange when you look at the available components. None of the components in any combination would get you close to that kind of a time span. However, using them properly and making sure you're not stressing particular components to their very edge helps to make that longevity possi- ble. As people used to say, you may have flat tires and an engine that is broken, but the radio still works. It's still true. I find the electronics that go into cars are designed so well, in most cases, that you exceed the component's recog- nized capabilities. It happens all the time. Holden: The components are well-handled. What's not well-handled is that the individ-