Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1483130
18 SMT007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2022 ate these big blobs of work that need to get done. It's a unique challenge that I haven't seen before. Johnson: Can you quantify the decommits? Is it twice what it was before? Sciberras: It's a lot more than that. ese last couple of months have been better than the first seven or eight months of the year. Still, we're probably seeing two to three dozen decommits a week. Johnson: Against how many jobs a week? Sciberras: Probably releasing 150 to 200 jobs or so. Johnson: at's a big number. Sciberras: Yeah, it's a big percentage, but it takes thousands and thousands of different parts to do what we do. We build very complex assemblies. ere are a lot of little pieces and some parts you can put on later, but that causes other issues. If the printed circuit board gets delayed, I can deviate a few parts, but I can- not deviate the printed circuit board. It's been a unique challenge. Johnson: You've hired somebody specifically to keep in daily contact with your suppliers to look for decommits. at says a lot. Now, have you had to drop into a more detailed anal- ysis of the bill of materials? It sounds like mul- tiple simultaneous solutions right up front for every job. Sciberras: We've got parts where I can't get a specific BGA. Instead of re-laying out the entire board, we've created interposer boards so we can fit an alternate part on there and translate to the parts that are available on the fly just to keep our customers up and running. Job Setup and Workflow Johnson: Let's move down the process to set- ting up. Customers hand over specifications and design details to you and your team at Saline. How has your process of doing that job been changed by what we've dealt with for the past three years? Sciberras: We're so much busier. ere's so much more to do on it. Johnson: Is it enough to just work harder or do you need to work smarter too? Sciberras: It's both. e evolution of our pro- cess over these last two years has been con- stant. I have an amazing team that I'm very proud of. It would have been very easy to get discouraged and say, "is is just too hard," or, "What we've done should work." We've had to evolve for sure. How we quote and when we quote is very different than what we used to do. Having good tools that allow us to see what those lead times look like and who's got stock, we must know a lot more informa- tion up front and then find ways to actively attack the issues. Jason Sciberras