Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/674146
38 SMT Magazine • May 2016 the problem and fix it. Of course, every second of downtime is very expensive. It's not uncommon for them to run a profile manually, because the oven is the black box process. They don't know exactly what's going on in there. Then after 15– 20 minutes, they see there's nothing wrong with that. They have wasted 15–20 minutes looking for a problem where it did not exist. With our system, we can know instantly whether it's a problem in the oven or not. If it's not, don't waste your time there. Go and check the other areas. If it is in the oven, we can typi- cally point out which zone. Is it the conveyor speed? So the maintenance people or the pro- cess engineer will get very good information that helps him identify and correct a problem quickly. There are other areas where we can help them save cost. For example, we can op- timize the oven set-up based on electricity use. We have four case studies out there where cus- tomers save 15% electricity in all their ovens. Las Marias: That's a big change. Dahle: Yes. When you look at the cost of the system versus the cost savings, it's very big. Las Marias: How would you compare the accep- tance of your technology in Asia to that in the U.S. or Europe? Dahle: That's one of the biggest surprises of my career here. Until recently, in countries like China where the labor rate was relatively low, which has since grown much higher and actual- ly is higher than Mexico, one would think that they would be less interested in the kind of so- phisticated automation that we're offering. The exact opposite has been the case. We are seeing, if anything, a higher interest in Asia than we're seeing in the rest of the world. That may change now with the Industry 4.0 or the Chinese "Made in China 2025" and so forth. It's really surprising, because I think Asia doesn't want to only compete on price. Asia ac- tually has the ambition and I think are proving themselves more and more that they can com- pete with the best manufacturers in the world, not only on cost but on quality as well. Las Marias: Bjorn, can you briefly talk about the benefits of having a fully-automated line when it comes to your reflows or operating processes? Dahle: One benefit is transparency. This black box, you know what's going on continuously. You're not dependent on certain operators or engineers. Another is process traceability, which is very big in the high reliability segments like automotive. If a product fails in the field two years later, you want to find a root cause to pre- vent that ever happening again. Now, I can take that product PCB that was produced two years ago, I can scan the barcode and I can see on the screen the profile that board had when it was produced, if that profile was in spec, and all that information. Traceability is very big. Also, low- ering electricity use, as I mentioned. I was fascinated last time I was in Asia, where companies now have budgets for automation. They are trying to make sure that they make it right the first time. There's now a growing list of clients, especially the high reliability clients, but going beyond that, automotive, medical, telecommunications, so forth, where they sim- ply refuse to accept any assembly that has un- dergone rework. If you have to rework it, just scrap it. It's ex- pensive, and so being able to make it right the first time is important and automation can help you do that, particularly the kind of systems that I explained that we have. I think that the ability to retrofit this technology on older ovens is very attractive to people. There are a number of other benefits, but if you're looking at the fi- nancial benefits, the biggest is to reduce the un- productive time and the downtime—whether it's troubleshooting, NPI, change-over time and Making SYStEMS SMaRtER to gain viSibilitY, tRacEabilitY, and REducE Handling ERRoRS " they have wasted 15–20 minutes looking for a problem where it did not exist. "