Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/599730
18 The PCB Design Magazine • November 2015 Paper: Their jobs should be getting easier. We have an employee who's a soldermask operator who is now essentially becoming a computer operator because it's less of a manual process and more of an automated, machine-generated process that's trimming hours off of our produc- tion time. Garcia: It's all about team collaboration for us, too. No matter what role in the production pro- cess somebody may work at, I want to know if they have a frustration with the process or ideas for process improvement. We want that feed- back so we can make ourselves more efficient. Matties: What about cycle time? do you guys measure that? time is your biggest enemy i would think. Garcia: I think that's our biggest driver at the end of the day. We've gone from relying heavily on outside vendors for certain processes to now having almost every process in-house. That was my largest driver of "Hey, if we want to be…" Matties: in business. Garcia: Right! Quickturn manufacturing is our focus and to deliver for our customers we need to keep cycle time at a minimum. Bringing pro- cesses in-house has been key for us. Paper: The more we can trim down on that process time, the faster we can put something in somebody's hand. It gives these companies more reason to come to us. Garcia: Every minute we gain is critical. Matties: Because that gives you capacity with- out additional cost. When you look at your cycle time, you collect data by process, i would imag- ine. You find out where your bottlenecks are just by looking at the investments you made. Garcia: Bottlenecks and the amount of employ- ees needed as well. Matties: that's the ratio. Garcia: We're trying to stay lean. Right now we're looking at automating our plating lines. Matties: that's a manual process right now. Garcia: Yes and automating it will help keep us lean, but also add consistency from a process standpoint. Paper: We'd love to grow the business to the point where we're adding jobs to the local econ- omy. That would be optimal, but from an over- head perspective we really have to watch it. It's not cheap to operate here in Silicon Valley, so that's something we have to keep a close eye on. Matties: i think you would look to technology so- lutions before you would people. Garcia: That's the human element as well, right? Now for an operator, the computer itself knows the process, and it's going to be the same every time. They hit a button and it runs, where right now you may be relying on an operator to manually follow the process. Matties: With specialty knowledge as well. now with the computerized manufacturing like your new soldermask system, they don't have to be a soldermask expert. they just need to know what buttons to push. i would think all the jobs are being fed in electronically anyway. GOOD IN, GOOD OuT: BAY AREA CIRCuITS DISCuSSES DATA STRATEGIES feature interview