Visit PCB manufacturers need to pay attention to what problems

If the customers of PCB manufacturers are invited to visit, what problems should they pay attention to? From what aspects to judge the strength of a PCB circuit board manufacturer?

1. Visit the production process

As a long-term cooperative customer, it is necessary to go to the site of PCB manufacturers to understand their cost composition, production efficiency and quality control. As an upstream supplier, you should go to the PCB production site and understand its production process in order to better serve the business. As a peer, if you have the opportunity to visit other circuit board factories, it is also a very good opportunity to learn, compare and reference.

PCB proofing requires many processes (such as: opening, drilling, copper sinking, circuit, electroplating, etching, welding resistance, text, surface treatment, testing, molding, etc.), by many people cooperation, a variety of equipment to complete. By visiting the process and equipment, as well as the experience of production workers, technical personnel's proficiency, can be roughly judged in the manufacturer's technology and yield.

2. Soak up the atmosphere

First of all, we can intuitively feel the mental outlook of employees during the visit to the site. Employees with high morale will form a sharp contrast with those who are depressed and indifferent. For example, in a factory, most of the workshops are playing cheerful music, at a glance, the workers are very enthusiastic about work, in such a relaxed and pleasant environment, the efficiency is relatively higher, and the quality of products will make people more confident.

In the field, pay attention to observe whether the workshop is busy and idle uneven phenomenon. For example, when the machine is processing automatically, the workers are idle for a long time, or some workers at the station are waiting for materials for a long time. This phenomenon indicates that the factory lacks lean management, low utilization of personnel, and inevitably higher costs.

In addition, we should also pay attention to whether the light of the workshop is sufficient, whether the air circulation is smooth, whether the scene has bad smell, whether the noise is too big, whether the workshop is clean, because these will directly affect the mood of the workers, and then affect the production efficiency and product quality. A circuit board manufacturer with a bad working environment, lazy working atmosphere and low employee morale is not likely to make a good product.

3. Pay attention to quality control

On site, attention should be paid to the workshop's treatment of defective products. Good circuit board manufacturers expose problems by, for example, focusing the waste with lights or highlighting it with red labels. The traceability of products and semi-finished products can be easily seen on site. In a good circuit board manufacturer, each component has a card or a document to follow the flow, indicating the source, processing personnel, equipment used and other information, so that problems found in any process can be easily traced back to the source.

The precision of quality management can be judged by the protection degree of workers for parts on site. For example, parts are randomly placed on the concrete floor, without any protective measures, such a finished product quality can be imagined.

4. Observe field standardization

A regular PCB manufacturer should have many standards on the production site, including operation and quality standards, 5S and safety standards, operation and maintenance standards, process and rework standards, safety inventory standards and so on.

By observing the specific operation process of different employees in the same process, we can find out whether there are differences, including the order of action, operation strength, whether there are omissions and other aspects. The difference indicates that employees lack standardized operation training, and the possibility of product variation is greatly increased.

Observe the workshop layout. The layout of the circuit board plant shall ensure smooth product flow and avoid any partition. In principle, the production materials used on the day should be stored along the production line, and the tools and tooling should be placed as close to the machine as possible.

5. Look for visualization

Visual tools are widely available in well-managed circuit board factories. Including workplace organization and standardization, outcome indicator visualization, standard operation visualization, control indicator visualization, automatic error prevention and error correction visualization, alarm mechanism and so on. When visiting, look for a variety of visual tools.

6. Tool device status

In a good circuit board factory, the equipment is clean and well maintained, and information about the equipment is readily available and updated. For example, the equipment records the equipment model, purchase date, price, supplier, maintenance record, maintenance record and so on. In addition, the daily spot-check list is also well recorded. Some spot-check lists clearly record the hidden dangers found by the operators, as well as the signature and treatment plan of the equipment department. This shows that the management and maintenance of equipment has formed a benign system.

7. Other considerations

(1) Can not bring colored glasses to see the scene, can not come to visit the scene with conclusions.

(2) The scene can not only look at the surface, but also need to ask a few more why.

(3) Should focus on details, look at the whole.

(4) Try not to take notes, which will make the site personnel feel nervous.

Whether it is supplier review, customer visit or peer evaluation, it is inevitable to understand the cooperative object PCB manufacturers through various ways in the process of cooperation. Field observation is a practical method to investigate and understand the cooperative objects, which has a very important reference significance for the internal self-understanding and improvement of PCB manufacturers, as well as the understanding and selection of suppliers.