Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/535707
28 SMT Magazine • July 2015 physical parts and we also qualify the primary manufacturer. It's important that the rep firm has enough experience, like Andy described with some chip makers. The rep firm also has to be consistent, dependable, experienced, and they need longevity with their manufactur- er. A lot of these guys will ask what you need sourcing on and say, "Okay, I'll go find a rep real quick." It doesn't work that way. There are too many problems. To qualify a supplier, it's really a three-step program. It's not only qual- ity assurance that does the factory audit, the supply chain group does a financial stability check, and then there's the qualification of the part itself. It's not just one simple step. It's actu- ally a team of folks that actually have to qualify that supplier beforehand. In some cases and on very complex parts, we utilize the design team themselves as part of qualification process. Who knows the parts/process better? Thomson: The scorecard and how EchoStar tracks quality is paramount. The most impor- tant thing you can do with managing any ven- dor is empirically measure their quality and be fair about it. If, for instance, we had a problem with the delivery and it was a vendor we said they had to use, and that vendor fell down on their sword and we happened to take points off for their DPPMs or for a CAR for that, we want them to challenge us and we'll change that scorecard. At the end of the day, it's not really their issue, it's ours. If someone ships you junk because we told you to use junk, then how can I hold you accountable? We measure performance every quarter, and we have all of them come in and we sit down and go through the issues line by line; it's been pretty easy. I think the last QBR with these guys lasted less than 10 minutes. Beller: As far as qualifying PCB suppliers, we get a lot of comments from the supply chain and suppliers that say, "You guys get more involved than anybody does." It's true, not just because we're crazy-technical, but because of necessity. We're auditing sample board impedance to prove their impedance design and for process center- ing impedance records when in production via statistical data monitoring, and DPPM by failure mode. We also audit them through our CMs by monthly problem reporting for "critical compo- nents." We put all this together and it becomes a quarterly business review with each of our sup- pliers. If you don't go out and look, you're never going to know where the problems truly are, so trust the data. Thomson: We started to run a product in Jabil Mexico, and they said, "What do you mean you want to go to the floor?" It's a huge operation down there and we wanted to watch our prod - uct being built. When you build our product we ECHOSTAR: THE FuTuRE OF SuPPly CHAIN MANAGEMENT DONE RIGHT continues FeAture Dish-joey cr, Hercules automated test area. Main board assembly work station.