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76 SMT Magazine • February 2017 decided we'd be better off doing our own com- ponent purchasing and pre-kitting." As Sensorcon incurred the full cost of man- aging its raw materials inventory, Wagner con- tinued to seek other suppliers that might be able to build his boards for less than the $12– $18 per board he was used to paying for each of his various products. "I visited several sub- contractors and I often noticed there'd be lots of highly automated equipment that was fre- quently sitting idle," Wagner recalls, "yet there were always lots of hand-assembly operations being performed at manual workstations. This made me realize that, when dealing with many of these subcontractors, I wasn't just paying for direct labor; I was helping to pay their overhead for under-utilized equipment." Wagner soon concluded that he should ac- quire his own equipment to build Sensorcon's products in-house and purchased a small turn- key assembly system (manual stencil printer, 3000 CPH pick and place system, and batch re- flow oven) from Manncorp. "I realized that, in our case, speed wasn't an issue" he said, "and I wouldn't be justifying the equipment based on how fast I could assemble boards. We would still be limited by our manual operations, which in- clude test and final assembly, but at least now we'd be paying for our own equipment and not somebody else's." Typically, Sensorcon builds its three main products in batches of just 200 pieces at a time, maintaining desired inventory levels using a just-in-time, Kanban production strategy. "Al- though we may have a little more money tied up in inventory, this takes a lot of the pressure off and allows us to maintain a steady supply of product," Wagner points out. "I felt that the PCB assembly could very easily be integrated into our existing production at minimal addi- tional cost, because staff can perform many of their regular tasks while the SMT equipment is running." As it turns out, Wagner's predictions BRINGING SMT ASSEMBLY IN-HOUSE Figure 6: Sensorcon's new production line in- cludes the 2-head MC-385 pick and place system, the same model Verbos uses to build his synthe- sizer modules. At 8000 CPH and $65K it ranks as one of Manncorp's most popular systems. Figure 7: For increased printing accuracy and easier stencil to board alignment, Sensorcon chose Manncorp's PB2300 vision-assisted semi- automatic stencil printer. Like their original pick and place machine, their manual stencil printer will now be dedicated to prototyping and new product development.