Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/535707
July 2015 • SMT Magazine 19 people out here frequently to support produc- tion and we carry a checklist to remind us to do things such as vacuum the machines and do preventative maintenance. We can see when the machines are flaking out before it happens. We take a proactive approach rather than a re- active approach to supporting our test systems. We collect MTBF data on our system compo- nents and monitor usage patterns. We have a shipping container that can travel between fac- tories so when a machine is down we are able to just ship the whole machine back. Each factory has a spare machine available on site. Once it's plugged in, we can load any software from Den- ver or anywhere in the world. We don't have to ship a CD with all the software on it. We can load it up and get it going right now. This ap- proach minimizes downtime and factory team involvement. Matties: Your relationship with this company is that of customer-supplier, but it sounds more like an extension of your own company. they're just part of the team. maybe payrolls and certain things might be different, but they're as invested in this process as you are. Moore: It's so effective, and it's different. I've seen the other side of the equation where you come on the floor and the people are physically hiding from you. Where is everyone? Are they off today? Or they're hiding things from you when you arrive. When you have that transparent relation- ship, it's awesome because productivity is high. They know that I can see productivity. If you look in my lab in Denver you'll see I have a 50- inch monitor that cycles through the through- put of all the factories. I can see when the ma- chines are online and offline. I can see the yield by product on the screen. Every 10 seconds it toggles between the different factories. We have over 100 Hercules test systems de- ployed around the world, and they're all cus- tom, but the network topology at each of the different factories is all the same. We have a par- ticular scheme so I know exactly which factory I'm looking at, and it's secure, meaning you can't get to it from the outside. I could get to it using the VPN tunnel. I use a scheme so that I know which factory is China, which one's India, which one's Guadalajara, or any other place we build. Then we have two dif- ferent networks that we can speak to. We have a secure network, which you can put your da- tabase on, and we have a non-secure network, which is where the testers live because the op- erators have access to it. If they have a network issue it may not be secure; we help them fix that ECHOSTAR: THE FuTuRE OF SuPPly CHAIN MANAGEMENT DONE RIGHT continues FeAture Debug repair. ESD check at production floor entrance, shop floor data monitored and controlled.