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52 SMT Magazine • October 2017 Passing through the looking glass from the academic world to the real world, we are like children looking for manufacturing wisdom. I remember during the emergence of SMT in the early 1980s, the floodgates opened and everyone was racing for the SMT assembly Holy Grail. People would approach me at conferences and ask, "What is the best pick-and-place ma- chine to buy?" In other words, "Just tell me the answer. Save me the details." Of course, the an- swer then, as it is now is that there is no single answer. The devil is in the details. Toward that end, in our decision-making class we suggest one important criterion in the judgment process is to employ an objective way to develop a figure of merit for each of the choic - es that are in front of us. Specifically, to develop a weighted averaging matrix: 1. List all the variables that affect the decision. 2. Weight each one's relative importance to your interests. 3. Rate each of the candidates with respect to one another. 4. Multiply the rating by the weighting factor in each category and sum the products to arrive at an option's figure of merit. Finally, our species has the distinct advan - tage of storing and sharing information. We didn't have to develop the optimum time/tem- perature reflow profile for 63/37, tin/lead solder. The manufacturers who wanted us to buy their solder paste and reflow ovens did this. They based recommendations on the empirical work they did in achieving a solder joint grain struc- ture with the preferred intermetallic that led to the most robust component-to-circuit board at- tachment. Even then, blind faith in the experts' recom- mendations could be misleading and dangerous. As stencil apertures got smaller and the volume of paste we printed decreased significantly, we ran into process problems (paste sphere oxida- tion) created by recommended by too slow soak reflow profiles. 7 Judgment once again becomes the operative term—unfortunately, it is not a skill that is cur- rently developed in our educational system. But, nonetheless, it is an essential attribute on the competitive field of the real world. At least that's what I think. What do YOU say? I'd like to hear your thoughts, reactions and opinions. Next month, we hope to have the statistics needed to support the component pricing dis- parity claim. SMT References 1. T. Borkes, "Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking and Analyzing the Cost of Material in Today's Global Economy, Part 1," SMT Magazine, June 2017. 2. T. Borkes, "Analyzing the Cost of Material in Today's Global Economy, Part 2," SMT Maga - zine, July 2017. 3. T. Borkes, "Analyzing the Cost of Material in Today's Global Economy, Part 3," SMT Maga- zine, August 2017. 4. T . Borkes, "Electronic Product Assembly in the Global Marketplace: The Material Piece of the Competitive Puzzle," SMTA Internation - al Conference Proceedings, Orlando, Florida, Oc- tober 2010. 5. T. Borkes, L. Groves, "Reducing Labor Con- tent as a Strategy to Improve Competitiveness— an Analysis that Addresses the Value of Design- ing for Automation and an Empirical Analysis that Exploits the Automation using META Pro- cess Control," SMTA International, Chicago, IL, September 30, 2015. 6. T. Borkes, "Concurrent Education: A Learn- ing Approach to Serve Electronic Product Manu- facturing," Proceedings of Surface Mount Tech- nology International, San Jose, CA, 1994. 7. T. Borkes, S. Fortner, L. Groves, "A Statisti- cal Approach to 0201 Component Package Uti- lization," SMTA International, Chicago, IL, Sep- tember 2002. Tom Borkes is the founder of the Jefferson Project and the forth- coming Jefferson Institute of Technology. To read past columns or to contact Borkes, click here. ANALYZING MATERIAL COST IN TODAY'S GLOBAL ECONOMY—HIT THE "PAUSE" BUTTON