Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1483130
22 SMT007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2022 for our documents, tickets, and package to get scrubbed—for the visual aids to be created, the BOM created, and so forth. But when every- thing's a constraint, you don't necessarily have the time to go aer the constraints. We've had to modify that process and ded- icate more resources. e procurement team has done a phenomenal job of being flexible and continually changing their processes based on what was working and what wasn't. I believe in commodity-based buying because of the knowledge that it creates; you get experts in specific fields where the work- load is. e team had to become very nimble and work in little groups to constantly shi the workload so if someone is overwhelmed they can receive help. We identify where the bottle- necks are so we can react to them. at was a big change. Johnson: With parts supply so tight, what else changes? Sciberras: I have an example. Traditionally in our industry, there's some scrap factor. When you set up and tear down a surface mount feeder, you will have some amount of scrap and that's always been acceptable. We all know about it. We know how to utilize it, but when there are 632 pieces of a part in the entire world, the customer doesn't want to hear they will lose four or five during set up. I paid a lot for these things. Even with chang- ing our setup and tear-down practices for these critically constrained components, we're actively managing 75,000 individual line items of different components—which ones are crit- ically constrained, will need these special pro- cesses, or don't. We've had to evolve and get better so we can minimize the waste that is part of any normal manufacturing process. Johnson: Based on these new practices, it's about balancing the timing, and the fact that the timing is always changing: "We can build it Tuesday. No, we can't build it until urs- day. Today, we can build it Wednesday. No, it's going to be next week." Does that open more room to be asynchronous about programming a job? Can you do setup while you're waiting? Sciberras: Yes, but that's always been part of our process. We have somewhat had the opposite problem: Because we set up, we never want our lines to go down. Our lines must always be running. We have a pit crew changeover team that does a great job of making sure we set up the right amount of material before the job starts, but to be done in time, we are working off a set of known information. is part will be here on ursday. You must set up these six jobs in order and suddenly that one part doesn't come in when it's supposed to come in, and all the setup just got thrown out of whack. How do we reconfigure to do that? It's about the technology, something we have invested in. We have an awesome tool, an intel- ligent feeder system, from Cogiscan. Because it's all RFID, we're faster than we've ever been at being able to move, shake, and switch from this process to that process. I have six high- speed surface mount lines here. ey all use a lot of feeders. I need feeders to support what isn't running yet, but if one thing doesn't show up, that job you were planning on running tomorrow isn't running because FedEx is running behind. Now, how do you switch "placeholder" jobs? We created this term to describe when we run I believe in commodity- based buying because of the knowledge that it creates; you get experts in specific fields where the workload is.