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46 SMT Magazine • June 2015 very quickly to customers' facilities. It's more efficient for them and it's more efficient for us. Once they are satisfied or they feel that we are able to meet the requirements, we can also go on-site. Matties: what sort of demands do customers make? Bornemann: It is a very wide range. Typically, the first is non-escapee; absolute no escapee must go through for the high-speed factories. Of course, cycle time is a very important issue. They want to know how big the throughput is. More and more false-cause rate has been important; every false cause is wasting time and is a potential risk, because the operator might classify it wrongly. So a low false-cause rate has been one of the really big demands recently. Matties: is that a big demand because the tech- nology has shifted in the marketplace? Bornemann: Yes. You get more accurate results now, and what is also happening is that usu- ally the escapees that slip through to customers are so-called human slips. It means the machine was right, but due to too many false causes the operator just pressed false cause. So every false cause is a risk for a human slip also. Matties: Switching gears a bit, where are you producing your machines? Bornemann: Our machines are made in Ger- many. All of the production and engineering is done in Germany. We do the camera modules ourselves, and the machines are hand-built. Singapore is our Asia headquarters, sales, ad- ministration, service and application support. Then we have a big China operation in Shang- hai, Suzhou, Kunshan, Changchun, and Sanji- ang, with resident engineers, application and service. Matties: do you find the currency issue to be favorable? Bornemann: Most of our customers are still pay- ing in Euros, so in that case it doesn't really af- fect us. But for those customers buying in U.S. dollars we are able to offer better prices. That's definitely favorable to us. Matties: what sort of service contracts do you require your customers to buy with your equip- ment? Bornemann: We are flexible in that regard. We offer carefree contracts, in which everything is included. We offer hour-by-hour, case-by- case issues where customers can buy a hundred hours at discounted rates. We offer maintenance contracts if they want us to do a maintenance calibration contract. Usually every contract is somewhat customized to what they need and what capabilities they have. Matties: what type of warranty do you offer with your equipment? Bornemann: We usually offer a 12-month war- ranty. Matties: Your machines, of course, are tied to the internet, and you have access to the data linked together, as you're saying. how do you use that data? do you ever look at it in an aggregate to see what the trends of quality are by region? Bornemann: We are evaluating their perfor- mance by region, which is also a matter of ser- vice quality. Matties: theoretically, with enough units placed in different regions, you could actually see who is building the highest quality products, by region. have you ever looked at that data that way? Bornemann: No, we usually do it service-wise. So we are checking what typical downtime is- sues for each region are. We evaluate this by customer specifics to see where we need to do something, and mainly we are just using this to check our service property. Matties: that is interesting. and are you in medi- cal as well? i would think their demands for quality are equal to automotive. InSPeCTIOn: THe LAST LIne OF DeFenSe continues Feature IntervIew