Monthly Archives: October 2009

Chong-where?

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Where in the world in Chongqing? If you don’t yet know, you’d better grab an atlas as the ultra-dense (population: 31.4 million) central China municipality is fast becoming the next major hub for electronics manufacturing.

A reported $43 billion worth of foreign investment is pouring into western China, with more than 550 companies taking flyers on the region. Foxconn is on board (to the tune of $1 billion), and Quanta is reportedly considering a similar deal to open a PC assembly plant.

Be forewarned: the Three Gorges Dam, which in many experts’ opinions is a disaster waiting to happen, is nearby. And the crime so rampant in Shenzhen is making its way to Chongqing as well. But there’s no stopping the pursuit of cheap labor — even if it costs billions to save pennies.

A Shout for Halla

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Brian Halla’s name doesn’t generate the same level of nods and recognition that goes with, say, Andy Grove, Gordon Moore, Jerry Sanders or Jerry Junkins.

But as the leader of National Semiconductor for the past 13 years, Halla ranks as the dean among his major chipmaker peers. His decision last week to step down should have met with more fanfare than it did.

When he took over National, it was a near-conglomerate, making everything from PCs to a full slate of chips. Much like Intel’s Grove, who eschewed the memory market for microprocessors, and TI’s Junkins, who stuck with memory, Halla opted to bet the farm on analog chips. In retrospect, his decision was fortuitous — and highly profitable.

While other semiconductor makers suffer through steep cycles, Halla’s strategy has paid off with standard company profit margins above 61%, and even during the nadir of the 2008-09 recession, National’s lowest profit margin was 58%.

More important, he has established a veteran management team that will allow for a smooth transition as he steps aside, and his model will likely carry over as a money-maker for years. Like Grove and Junkins, Halla made the tough calls. Here’s hoping history remembers him well.

Patty Gets Her Man

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Patty and Rob went to balance the line. They found that this very complex board had 1350 passives, 24 simple ICs (SICs) and nine complex ICs. Currently the chipshooter (CS) is placing all the passives and nine of the SICs.

The flexible placer (FP) is placing the nine complex ICs and 15 SICs. The placement rate for the chip shooter is 60,000/hr. for passives and 3,000/hr. for SICs. The CS cannot place CICs. The FP places complex ICs at 4,000/hr. and passives and SICs at 8,000/hr.

To balance a line, Rob and Patty start by seeing how long it will take the CS to place all of the passives and the FP to place all of the SICs and CICs.

For the CS to place all of the passives

timeCS = 1350 passives/60K passives/hr. = 0.01945 hr. = 81 sec.

The time FP takes to place all of the SICs and CICs is

timeFP = 24 SICs/8K SICs/hr   + 9 CICs/4K CICs/hr = 0.003 hrs + 0.00225 hrs = 18.1 seconds

Since the FP is waiting for the CS, Patty and Rob should move passives to the FP. They will determine the number of passives, x, to move to the FP by equalizing the CS and FP times

tCS = (1350-x) passives/60K passives/hr  = x passives/8K/hr + 18.1 secs/3600 sec/hour

Solving for x:

(1350-x)/60,000 = x/8,000 +18.1/3600

1350 – x = 7.5 x + 301.667

8.5 x = 1048.333

x = 123.33

In other words, 123 passives go to FP (the reason Patty and Rob round down to 123 is due to the much faster placement speed for the CS).

So Patty and Rob moved to 123 passives to the flexible placer.  Each machine’s time should be about the same now.  They performed the following calculation to check their results

tCS = (1350-123)/60,000 = 0.02045 hrs = 73.62 sec.

tFP = 18.1/3600 + 123/8000 = 0.02043 hrs = 73.45 sec.

Patty and Rob then went to the line to physically move the passive feeders to the FP.  They then measured the placement time of the both the CS and FP and found them to be 73.4 and 73.5 sec., respectively, quite close to their calculations.

A meeting was held to discuss the results and the tremendous productivity improvement (81 vs 73.5 second cycle time, an (81-73.5)/81 = 9.26 % improvement.)  Everyone at AJAX was pleased (maybe not Charlie!) and felt the experience was one of great learning.

At the end of the meeting Patty and Rob had a brief chat.

“Patty, I really appreciate all of your help,” said Rob said.

“Don’t forget The Professor. I don’t think I could have handled Charlie without him,” responded Patty.

“Anyway, to show my gratitude, will you allow me to take you to dinner?” asked Rob.

Soup to Nuts

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Today Mentor Graphics signed an agreement to acquire Valor Computerized Systems. This acquisition gives Mentor a robust back end to an already impressive stable of systems design tools.

I guess it just goes to show that there are still acquisitions out there worth making. While I can’t confirm yet that the PCB Matrix library tools are included (it’s 10:30 pm EST right now), I’m assuming that it does. Talk about your soup to nuts: the only thing missing is to make the relationship with Downstream more formal and Mentor will have design covered from design entry to documentation and manufacturability.

While the deal is still subject to regulatory approval, it does not appear that there will be problems.

The deal is expected to close early in the first quarter of 2010. Stay tuned for more.
p.

Finding Your ‘Herbie’

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“Your chipshooter is “the Herbie” in your process…, ” The Professor continued.

“That’s it!” a confident voice boomed from the back of the room.

“Who’s that?” Patty asked Rob.

“That’s Chris Conrad, our general manger. He’s a pretty sharp guy.”

Chris continued, “I remember “Herbie” from reading The Goal when I was at Tuck in the 1980s. Herbie was a chubby boy scout, during a hike, he held up all of the scout troop because he was loaded down carrying all of the soda. Finally the scouts realized that they had to help Herbie to make good time in the hike.   My professor assigned us problems to find where there is a constraint in a process. He even called it, ‘Finding the Herbie in the process’.”

“You don’t mean to tell me you’re  gonna take work off them chipshooters are ya?” Charlie impatiently inquired?

“No, the chipshooters will be working just as hard,” The Professor calmly replied.

“How can this be?”asked Charlie in disbelief.

“I made some calculations,” responded The Professor.  “In them, I estimate that if you move passives from the chipshooter to the flexible placer, both machines will have a cycle time of about 73 seconds. Your productivity will increase by about 10%. The chipshooter will be working full time, but the flexible placer will not be waiting for it.”

“Wow,” chimed in Chris, “Our CFO, Tom Stevens, will be thrilled … as am I.”

“Your increase in profit may actually be more than 15 percent,” The Professor added.

The Professor went on, “My calculations were only estimates,  Patty knows how to balance a line.  Give her the exact metrics and she can calculate the actual minimum cycle time. Patty, can you do this?”

“Sure thing Professor,” responded Patty.

Patty and the AJAX team, led by Rob, went off to perform some calculations. Stay tuned to see the results and how they got them.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

Trade (No) Shows

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SMTAI is over and done.  It was, in my opinion, a disappointment. While several companies remain on travel lockdown, the location — San Diego — was central to large numbers of designers and assemblers, precious few of whom bothered to make the (short) drive.

I don’t have the numbers from the SMTA yet, but my sense is the attendance for the technical conference was pretty good. But there was very little traffic on the exhibition floor, a result that mirrored IPC Midwest a few weeks earlier.

We can blame the economy. We can blame the layoffs. We can blame a lot of things. But the industry seers — also known as the media — have been saying for years there are too many shows. With Electronics New England, Electronics West, SMTA Atlanta, the myriad Design2Part shows, IPC Apex, Assembly Technology Expo, IPC Midwest, PCB West, and SMTAI, among many others, the regionalization — and bastardization — is effectively complete. There is simply no reason for a potential attendee to get excited about an event, because when you are practically showered with opportunities, the impact is dramatically lessened. (As an aside, none of this should be laid at the feet of the SMTA staff. They worked their hearts out to put on a top-notch technical conference and to this observer’s eye everything was beautifully executed. They deserved better.)

The show producers of these events are going to have to look hard at their bank accounts and reconsider their missions. While I don’t expect the for-profit companies (of which Circuits Assembly’s parent company, UP Media Group, is one) to change their approach, it’s high time the trade associations get together and get an agreement done that puts some sanity back into the trade show calendar.

Put the egos and greed aside, and get it done.

The Pb-Free Bookworm

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How many books did you read last year? John R. Barnes claims 300 himself, and that’s just cover-to-cover. (In his free time, he devoured some 800 magazine articles.)

After seeing his own opus, I believe him. The former Lexmark engineer’s tome, Robust Electronic Design Reference Book, checks in at about 1,500 pages, including 122 pages of references. (Writing it took him 4,200 hours, says Barnes, who apparently documents pretty much everything.)

None of that it is the point of this post, however. Rather, I want to call attention to Barnes’ “other” effort — the documenting of all the available references to lead-free electronics. He has painstakingly cataloged and alphabetized the list, with links available here. This is a must bookmark for anyone involved in lead-free manufacturing, and the industry owes Barnes a standing ovation for compiling it.

‘The Goal’ of Line Balancing

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The day of the line balancing telecom with AJAX had arrived and Patty was nervous. She had a feeling that the meeting might be contentious.

She felt some relief that The Professor would be teleconing in. The Professor had asked Patty to request a brief tour to measure the chipshooter and flexible placer placement times on one of the lines.

Patty arrived at AJAX an hour before the telecon. Rob took her for the tour. After the tour Patty and Rob went to the meeting room. While they were setting the computer projector and telecom equipment up, the attendees started to arrive. Patty had agreed to give a short presentation on the importance of line balancing, to kick things off. Rob had already told her that Charlie, the lead senior engineer, would be a hard sell.

After everyone had arrived and Patty had called The Professor, she began her brief presentation on line balancing. AJAX has three similar assembly lines each with a $2 million Pinnacle ultra high speed chipshooter and one of Pinnacle’s top of the line flexible placers.

On her tour, Patty measured the placement time for the chipshooter at 81 seconds and the flexible placer at 18 seconds. Patty mentioned in her presentation that for maximum productivity the chipshooter and flexible placer should each take the same amount of time. Upon hearing this comment, Charlie hit the roof.

“Let me tell you something about running a manufacturing facility, little girl,” Charlie fumed at Patty. “When I bought them three $2 million chipshooters, I promised Tom Stevens that I would work them puppies to death. Everyone knows that to minimize costs you must use your expensive equipment the most, so I make sure every feeder is full on all them there chip shooters.”

Patty couldn’t tell whether she was more intimidated or annoyed, but was ready to speak when The Professor intervened.

“Charlie, have you read The Goal?” asked the Professor.

“The only ‘Goal’ I have is to down a few cold ones after I finish wit youse guys.” Charlie shot back.

Patty looked a Charlie’s ponderous beer gut and thought to herself, Now that is something I believe!

Was Charlie right? How does The Goal fit in? Will the meeting take a more productive turn? Who is Tom Stevens?

Stay tuned for the latest.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

Santa Anna, Redux

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That was quick. Electronic News today raised the same point as my post from last week.

To quote: Opinion: In comparison to China, Mexico has emerged as a “best cost country” for products destined for the United States and global markets. Daniel J Hill, CEO of Silicon Border, argues that the reasons for this trend are relatively straight-forward.

You can read the article here.