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68 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2021 variety of opinions. I am not an expert in these political and social areas, but it serves as an ex- ample to define infrastructure. Similarly, in the electronics industry, there is no disagreement on the basics of manufac- turing infrastructure—appropriate buildings, offices, manufacturing spaces, and all the nec- essary equipment for building your products. However, you need more than the building and the machines. Having the right machines for the job is important but it is not sufficient to achieve high yield on a consistent basis. What You Need to Optimize Manufacturing Machine Characterization What else do you need besides the equip- ment? In addition to equipment operating procedures provided by the suppliers, you also need to fully characterize each machine and create an equipment characterization docu- ment for each piece of equipment. Since ev- ery machine has its own idiosyncrasies, this al- lows the operator to thoroughly understand all the peculiarities, eccentricities, and quirks of each machine. You know you have fully char- acterized your machine if you can produce a defect on demand. Of course, you will never do that, but you know you can. Characteriz- ing the machine is about understanding all the equipment-dependent variables and how they impact product quality and output. Very few companies have such documents. In addition to equipment characterization documents, you also need equipment maintenance and cal- ibration procedures to produce a product with consistently high quality. Process Recipes en there is a process recipe that you need for each process on the manufacturing floor. is is not equipment-dependent documenta- tion. It has nothing to do the machines them- selves but with the process performed by those machines. Examples of such documen- tation would be handling and printing of sol- der paste, and developing the product-specif- ic profile. We need a document for each step of the manufacturing process, such as storage of moisture-sensitive boards and components, adhesive and paste printing and dispensing, placement of components, soldering, rework, cleaning, inspection, and test. ese are com- pany specific, internally developed documents and very few companies have these process documents, as is the case for the equipment characterization document mentioned earlier. DFM Documents Having the process and equipment doc- umentation is not going to be enough. e products being built must be designed cor- rectly. Just because the defects are seen in manufacturing does not mean that the root cause lies in manufacturing. How the product is designed plays a key role. at means having a company specific, internally developed de- sign for manufacturing (DFM) document that includes component selection, design guide- lines, and rules. Unfortunately, DFM is anoth- er company-specific document that very few companies have. Standards and Certifications ere are companies who think that since they are ISO9000 certified, they have all the documentation that they need. If that was true, no one would have quality issues since almost all companies are ISO-certified. Nothing could be further from the truth. e reality is that these days most companies claim to have pro- cess recipes since most of them are now ISO- certified. ISO certification is a good thing but very oen it is more of a marketing tool and not helpful for building products with high yield. e ISO requirement is, "Say what you do and do what you say." Most companies do not say much and keep their ISO documents too general with no specific details about the design and process so that they can easily pass and keep their ISO certification when audit-