Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1501483
JUNE 2023 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 61 cuit boards. We've found that we could hire someone with a master's in engineering, but they don't understand printed circuit boards, solder mask, or applications like back-drilling. ese terms are completely foreign. As much as the training is directly on the machines, it's equally about understanding the industry ter- minology, chemistry, and so forth. e new hire will typically spend a month in Germany, going into the fac- tor y, taking the machines and motor s apar t , and getting a solid foundation of the platform. At that point, they can go deeper into the v ision soft ware and some of the align- ments and accuracy of the machine. Once they come back from Germany, we send them into the field, super- vised by a senior engineer. Even though you've taken apart the machines, there's more you haven't seen, and you don't learn until you're on the job fixing something. Much of this train- ing is learning by doing. Do you have an internal certification program? Do you sign off on their skill set? Yes. ere are so many parts of the machine, so we list them all out and have the engineer go through them all. How about preventative maintenance and working with the onsite operators and maintenance departments with customers? How has that changed? Most of our customers have signed a service agreement that brings a trained service engi- neer onsite to do a full check of the machine every three to six months. During that preven- tative maintenance, many customers bring in their own maintenance techs to shadow us so they can gain exposure to things they may not regularly see. A big struggle for their mainte- nance techs is in maintaining multiple makes of machinery. It's a lot to learn just one machine, let alone multiple machines. Having regularly scheduled maintenance increases reliability. As a result of these service contracts, we have seen the number of emer- gency service calls drop dramatically. About 70% of our customers are now on service agreements. We have service techs based in places like New Hampshire, Mas- sachusetts, New Jersey, New York , Chicago, Texas, Cali- fornia, Utah, and Denver. e better we can minimize emer- gencies, the better it is for everyone. That's a good reason for the service contract. Ultimately, the goal is to keep that customer's facility punching out boards and making money. When the machines are running, nobody thinks about it. If we're scheduled a year in advance and visiting every three to six months, the machines get the attention they deserve. Scheduling and doing preventative mainte- nance is one less thing that the customer needs to worry about. How do you tie spare parts together with the service contract? We have a preventive maintenance kit that includes several consumable parts. On a drill- ing machine, this would include air and water filters; on a laser machine, we clean or replace the optics inside that beam path. All our sys- tems come with a preventative maintenance kit. We've also increased our spare parts stock- ing. Once you have a lot of machines, you know Having regularly scheduled maintenance increases reliability.