Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1361971
APRIL 2021 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 17 Thompson: It was continuous, and it should al- ways be continuous at all fabricators, at all times. It should be 100% continuous every day, every hour, every second, and down to the op- erator and down to everything. Matties: What was your strategy for implement- ing continuous improvement? How would you go about that? Thompson: at really would be more of a qual- ity manager role. But as a process person, I would be looking at the numbers and say- ing, "We had this problem. What is our strat- egy to make sure that we don't have this prob- lem again?" Some things we will do repeated- ly, at which point they get higher focus and say, "Look, this has become an epidemic and we need to really focus on this and put this one to bed." Matties: e quality manager is really the one who's saying this process needs to be tighter, then they would come to the process engineer and work with you to tighten up the parameters. Thompson: Exactly. Matties: So, it wasn't necessarily the process engineer who is randomly saying, "I can make this better." You were really direct- ed by the output and the interpretation of re- sults. Thompson: In some cases, it was me saying, "We need to do this." And then I would get with the quality manager. Because it may not manifest itself in a lot of scrap. It may be very low numbers of scrap, but I'd say, "It may be very low numbers of scrap, but it's continuous year aer year, month aer month. We've got to make sure that we can put this to bed." Matties: Right. And what was the other goal? Yields obviously, as you're talking about, but time to market is certainly a goal when you're looking at bottlenecks and that sort of thing. at's something that the quality manager doesn't see. Because what you're looking at as a process engineer is start-to-finish cycle time, I would think. Thompson: Exactly. We used to time our cy- cle times on various projects. Did it require blinds? Did it require burieds? Did it require alternative surface finishes? Did it require spe- cial lamination cycles? Some lamination cycles require a minimum of two-hour extra bake cycles in five places in the process. If you can imagine, that's 10 additional hours that you may not have planned for as an inside salesper- son, saying, "We'll take that. We can do that." Or they'll get with a produc- tion manager and they'll say, "Sure. We can take that on." But they're not necessarily considering, "is is X mate- rial, and it's going to take an additional 10 hours of bake time alone to be able to get this through the shop." Matties: We've covered a lot in manufacturing, but what do you think it really takes to be a fabricator these days? Thompson: Honestly, with as many new tech- nologies as are emerging today, I think the key thing is to stay up with technology and to be able to put your money where your mouth is; put your money back into process and be able to purchase the equipment that's going to be able to support that process. Matties: Will the goal be to eliminate as much labor as you can in the process? Thompson: Sure, you certainly can. at was a conundrum when management wanted to