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30 SMT Magazine • April 2016 even inspection programming for AOI and AXI machines. The Valor Parts Library central shape-man- agement library tool provides a significant and reliable database of shape information. It can be an important asset in the race to reduce the lead-time of process preparation. It means that accurate verified information is available for all areas of process preparation at any time. Creating and maintaining shape libraries has two major challenges. Any new part num- bers that are added to the design need to be identified. The shape of a new part number could be the same as an existing part number and so it can be mapped, or it may be a completely new and unknown shape. The limitation of not know- ing the actual shape is critical for new products using materials that are new and may not yet be physically on site. These shapes are required for the engineering process, for SMT, test, and inspection as well as confirmation of things in the basic data such as rotations. Not being able to know the shape data can delay many of the process preparation stages. Designing for assembly and Manufacturing Once a complete and accurate data model of the product is created for production, some automated tests can be run to find any areas of interest in the design itself. Issues in manu- facturing may crop up as a result of a design that may not have a good understanding of the needs and limitations of the manufacturing processes. It can be as simple as the actual ma- terials being larger than expected, the leads be- ing different shapes than expected, or the test points being in inaccessible places, etc. There are literally hundreds of categories where com- promises may have been made. Knowing these issues in advance provides the opportunity to plan countermeasures into the operation, reducing the risk of quality is- sues. An undetected quality issue that makes its way into the market can have fatal consequenc- es for the product life and business returns. For the contract manufacturer, this provides the opportunity to use the best information about the product and production processes and to be able to more accurately make the quotation for producing the product to the customer. For the OEM manufacturer, the same principle of design for assembly is an opportunity to feed issues back to the design team with a view of improvement for the next generation of design, based on actual manufacturing capabilities and limitations. bEsT-PracTicE ProcEss PrEParaTion for Pcb assEmblY Figure 4: The Valor Parts Library is a key element to the accuracy of the product data model used in Valor Process Preparation solution. Figure 5: DFM analysis is crucial to protect product quality and the cost of manufacturing.