Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1433652
100 SMT007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2021 "Let Chuck explain," John said. "Well, the improved uptime continued at a little over 45%," Chuck began, "and nearly ev- eryone is involved. Not only is uptime high, but the morale and camaraderie are remarkable." "Profitability has skyrocketed even though we have been the low bidder on several con- tracts. Maggie and John are even considering a late mid-year bonus in addition to the Christ- mas bonus," Frank chimed in. "I understand that you have been working on first pass yields too," Patty mentioned. "Let me take that one on," John said. "For years, we repaired the boards coming off the line before tallying first pass yields. Because of this, we never developed continuous im- provement 2 action plans to improve yields. In the past six weeks or so, we have collected the failure modes before repairing the boards. e Pareto chart shows the yield fallout by failure mode type," he continued. "Many people don't recognize how powerful using a Pareto chart can be in understanding the data. It shows where to focus," Patty com- mented. "Once we saw what the failure modes were, we developed action plans to improve the yields. First pass yield was 95% and now is up to 98%," Maggie added. "We were all surprised at how many head-in- pillow defects there were. Aer chatting with our solder paste vendor, they suggested a differ- ent paste that was developed to reduce this de- fect. e new solder paste virtually eliminated the head-in-pillow defects," Chuck pointed out. "In addition, a solder defects book 3 created by Indium Corporation really helped us to re- duce the defects. It's free and can be obtained at I-Connect007. Indium Corporation devel- oped webinars on some of the topics, and even offered to come onsite for in-person work- shops, if requested," John said. Figure 1: A Pareto chart of first pass yield failures by type.