Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1361971
26 PCB007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2021 that I observe. Any time you see a trend of five points decreasing, it could be a dosing issue, so I would jump right on the dosing, and ver- ify it's dosing what I've asked it to dose; sec- ond, maybe the chemical ran out and there's an airlock. I get a lot of those emails where it will show you process control. Matties: When you stand back as a process en- gineer and take that 30,000-foot view of a pro- cess, what do you want to improve to optimize it? What's your process for doing that? Mack: e first thing I monitor is speed. We track panels through and panels out. I would always start with asking: What are some of the slower ones, and how do I increase throughput on that piece of production? If you're going to have funnels where, let's say, the score ma- chine is not putting out as many panels as the plating line, I might need to buy either a faster score machine or an additional score machine to maximize output. As we're ramping up here, there is some capex equipment that we're look- ing to quote in order to increase production on the floor. Generally, speed is what I look at. e second thing would be chemical usage. If it costs us X to run one panel, what is the im- pact of that one piece of chemical on the panel? I look at price per panel by operation, as well. Can I get away with dosing less? For instance, for the pre-treat line, they recommended run- ning something like 20 milliliters a panel. I ac- tually optimized it to only run at about 8 mil- liliters. It saved us $18,000 over the course of a year. A lot of what drives me to look at process either optimizes panel production or price. Re- garding price, for example, every six months I'll review price per panel to determine where we can improve and where we can't. Matties: You're looking at bottlenecks in your process and the cost of materials. Where does cost of labor come in? Are you looking at auto- mation to reduce labor cost in your process im- provement as well? Mack: Yes. ere are some new things out that we've discussed, especially with capex. We are still doing screen solder masking. Scott, who brought me on board, has always looked into inkjet solder mask, which would decrease la- bor quite a bit. For set-up and tear-down times, it's taking us an hour to two hours a day just to set up and tear down. Inkjet would in- crease throughput through that process alone. You automate as much as you can, but you still need people. We might be able to move someone to watch a couple different areas. Right now, we have loaders and unloaders, but even with that, you still need people. We've been doing a lot of cross-training as well, so when some of the Matt Mack (right) and Bill Phillips (left) discuss the company's R.O. (reverse osmosis) water treatment processes with Molly Reed and Bruce Graverly of Aries Chemical.