Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/535707
July 2015 • SMT Magazine 25 brought in all these great people and we brought them back. That's what we want to see. We love the new management and the people there. Matties: so you gave them the opportunity to im- prove and regain trust. Thomson: That was what I call a dramatic fix. I have a very heightened sense of smell. I can smell someone smoking a cigarette in a car in front of me on the road. I don't want to walk into a building and smell fumes. I don't want these young women—who have been work- ing and saving their money for five years—to go back to their province and have a child with birth defects because they were subjected to bad chemicals building a product for us in an envi- ronment that was not treated properly. Matties: i noticed in their wave solder process they had a special filter for fumes. Thomson: It shows they're willing to take it a step further. Another supplier had an oven in Mexico and every time I'd come by I would smell fumes from it. I finally told them, "Enough! Get rid of it!" and they did. They brought in a Vit- ronics unit and no more fumes. Matties: it's really interesting: You're in a supplier/ vendor relationship but it feels like this is just an ex- tension of your company when you walk through here—the way they've tooled the factory and how well your teams are connected. micah was explain- ing his system of being able to see all the informa- tion in real time back in colorado. that gives you some incredible insight for them to improve and for you to improve. Thomson: We changed the paradigm of how we operate. When I came onboard it was just one of those things where finally I had the opportu- nity to implement all the things that I wanted to, but never could. When I worked for an EMS, I'd get these emergency calls, disasters pending, and look into them. I'd say, "Okay, this is some bad mojo and it's going south really quick. What would you like to do? You can do it two ways: You can throw people at it now, which will cost money, but fix this before it gets out of control and really in the customer's face, or you can rely on the people in that factory say- ing they're going to fix it, which they won't, and it's going to crash and burn. You're going to have all kinds of rejects and, at the end of the day, you're still going to have to throw more money and people at it, but you'll have lost the reputation of the plant with your customer. So what do you want to do?" Invariably the plant managers that had these issues would convince corporate that they'd have it fixed. Sixty days later I'd have a team inbound. If it was really bad, I'd be with the team. Beller: Something I'd like to add on the turn- over rates that we've seen in PCB factories is that a fter Chinese New Year some of the people just don't come back. Companies have gotten to the point where they have to give them half the reward upfront to bait them back and after Chi- nese New Year they get the balance of the bonus. We've found that with companies that have high fumes, poor lodging, nothing to do on campus, are a horrible place to live and work, it's easier for workers to jump ship and go to the guy down the street. Now you've just lost all your training. Turnover is something we watch very closely with both CMs and suppliers during qualifica - tion and during business years. You can literally watch the quality drop during this time of year when companies lose too much skilled labor. ECHOSTAR: THE FuTuRE OF SuPPly CHAIN MANAGEMENT DONE RIGHT continues FeAture andy Thomson, vp of operations.