Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/535707
18 SMT Magazine • July 2015 business rules dictate what each company can and cannot do. For instance, they are not al- lowed to delete things, add things, and change things on the machine. They're allowed to do their job, and if they need to do something that seems like it's not part of the normal process, they need to send us a message. We use distribu- tion lists, so the message goes to the entire test research and development team or the test en- gineering team. Once one of the team members reviews the request from the factory, someone will get back and say, "Okay we're good and we understand it." The same thing is true for our system hardware—our box is sealed. They're not allowed to open the box. We keep security tape on there and inspect it as part of our normal process for any factory visit. If it's ever broken, they are immediately issued a corrective action, which affects their scorecard and, in turn, their ability to get future business. Matties: so the scorecard is really an important fac- tor in determining their level of business from you? Moore: During the business review, we discuss their performance relative to the standard we have published for all companies we conduct business with. Internally, we assess the perfor- mance relative to their competition in a num- ber of areas—test, paradigm shifts, quality, sup- ply chain, improvements, etc. They're graded across the board on a million different things. We use the same scoring format for all factories. When they lose points in any given area, even though my area is only a small segment of that, it drops the overall score which, when they're in competition for business with other suppliers, could mean the difference between getting a 30% share of the new business and getting a 70% share. The relationship works so well because there are no secrets. We know what they're doing, and they know what we're doing, and we com- municate with them regularly. We give them options if they're not able to find the particular HW we characterized and qualified in our lab. It usually involves them sending samples of the HW they have available back to Denver so we can integrate it into our systems and qualify it for production use. We might develop the solu- tion in our lab and ship it to them so they don't have to worry. It just works perfectly. All of our hardware at that point is qualified and all works together. It's a team effort. These guys aren't on the hook for doing any maintenance or support. We do that. We send ECHOSTAR: THE FuTuRE OF SuPPly CHAIN MANAGEMENT DONE RIGHT continues FeAture icT test (left), incoming inspection of plastic components (middle), line set-up (right).