Production Schedules….Scheduled! – “General Guidelines”
In this post, I’d like to review some basic guidelines that most production planners and schedulers seem to agree upon. Not meant to be the cure-all defacto standard, but based on polling several factories of various sizes and strategy seems to be a core list.
1) Plan the schedule to ensure up to 99% capacity of the bottleneck operation … Read More
Tags: Scheduling, Production Planning, EMS
“Strategic Alignment”
There are many variables the influence meeting production schedules. One of which is factory strategic alignment.
The goals of a factory are heavily influenced by the incentive programs deployed in the factory. These incentives should be driven by that organization’s competitive strategy in their markets. Are they focused on advanced technology, low-cost producer, highest … Read More
Tags: Scheduling, Production Planning
Production planning is a dynamic problem to solve, as the variables seem infinite.
As more and more global regions move to high-mix with increasing volume production, the planning task of running multiple products effectively through existing assets and resources poses a significant scheduling challenge. Manufacturing plants today are challenged with shipping the required quantity of products on time, … Read More
Tags: Scheduling, Production Planning
My blogs have talked about the advantages of running DFM analysis early in the design process where it is easier to address the issues that have been found. The Valor Division product, vSure, is the perfect solution to work in conjunction with Expedition Enterprise for example to provide that feedback. However, there is one area of DFM that can benefit from analysis that is performed with the assembly … Read More
Another area I discussed in my recent article for PCB007 was with Design For Test or DFT. Ensuring that accurate test or inspection techniques have been catered for before a layout is signed off will ensure that any assembly or component issues will be found as early as possible in the manufacturing process. For each additional step during the manufacturing process it is estimated that the cost of corrective … Read More
Tags: PCB, Manufacturing, boundary scan, Design For Test, ICT, inspection, DFT, Flying Probe
In a recent article for PCB007 I discussed the definition of Design For Manufacturing (DFM). As a follow up to that article I will elaborate on the discussion in terms of the solutions that the Valor Division of Mentor Graphics can provide.
For concurrent design analysis, Valor vSure provides an un-paralleled capability to work in conjunction with the layout design tool to create, not just a physical … Read More
MRP is king, reigning supreme since the 1970s. What seems to not need to be “rocket science” continues to attract vast sums of money justified by the continued dominance of costs of materials and supply chain elements of any manufacturing business.
Since the 1970s, pretty much everything about MRP has been improved. The sales forecasting is getting close to being “rocket science” as effects of things … Read More
Tags: MRP, Inventory Accuracy, JIT, Materials Management, Material Turns
Our electronics manufacturing factories today are finally picking up steam. This is creating pressure on many companies who are looking for ways to improve performance-to-schedule. One of the most important factors in attracting and keeping customers, is the ability to continuously meet delivery commitments for production and to keep the delivery time as short as possible. This is especially true in … Read More
For the final installment of this series on components, I will discuss the solution that the Valor Division has for dynamic build order management. One of the neglected areas of PCB manufacturing is being able to sequence and then react to the day to day challenges of meeting production goals. For example, when many different products needs to be built, on multiple lines, with different configurations … Read More
Tags: PCB assembly, Scheduling, BOM, components, process engineering, Sequence, Manufacturing, Planning
Okay, well maybe that is a little bit of an exaggeration but there are still many ways to leverage the manufacturer specific package data from the VPL throughout the Process Engineering flow.
As a follow up to my last posting I mentioned that I would be talking about the creation and use of manufacturer specific packages. Through the use of the VPL, manufacturer specific packages can be downloaded … Read More
Tags: packages, Manufacturing, PCB, AVL, approved vendor list, process engineering, components, test, inspection, bill of materials, VPL, BOM