Silly resistor values

higher

You could even do that in the 80's, at least positive edges, with a BFS17 as a follower.

Those were horrible. The only proper way was to have a full ground plane. At my first employer I insisted on prototyping my stuff on a perf board with a full ground plane. Everybody thought I was a bit too paranoid about it. Then my board ran and others didn't until we squished lots of 3M copper tape between sockets. Afterwards everybody used ground plane perf board :-)

Sorry, but it costs several hundred dollars just to buy a single 100 pc bag of screws to cover a shortage, if purchasing has to get involved. So it costs near that amount to re-introduce parts into inventory, and change the way program managers would kit it out. They would first have to check inventory, and then expiry dates and lead times of the CM, etc. Then they would have to be the exact part that was spec'd by the design group that made it. The PMs are used to buying the parts needed for a kit, plus attrition, and "gettin' 'er done!". It is far cheaper against the budget for a program to do that than if one bills out the costs of all those that would be involved with retrieving unused kit tailings. Also, each design team works independent of others, so the 0.01µF 0603 chip cap used by one group would not be the same used in another group. Instead of forcing hundreds of engineers to waste time learning all one like paradigm, including newly purchased subsidiaries, is far more costly than letting them all do what they all know the way they all know it. That way, a new acquisition need not make huge adjustments to fit the new parent company's work paradigms.

One might find 100 different 0.01µF 0603 caps in our system, with a whole array of differing specs all within that one value. Each having their own P/N. So ANY that one finds upon a search must be verified for use by the PM that bought them. Maybe it will sink in a bit now.

Certain programs flat forbid any such action as re-use of any part of a BOM from their design.

It is far cheaper for a company that is large and growing still to use a system that allows each engineer to fly through life with the (his) stick in *his* hand. Of course any huge screw up will cost him and the company, but you would be surprised at how low that number is.

That sounds like some organizational change is in order. Our purchasers would issue that kind of order in 2-3 minutes on their computation machines and then move on :-)

Ok, then the incoming inspection guy would spend another 2 minutes on the arriving bag of screws and stash it in inventory. So 5mins total. Those guys didn't make several thousand Dollars an hour. With my dentist I am not so sure, $800 for a root-canal, ouch.

That's the next problem. When I took over we abandoned this whole "idea" of kitting (which I never understood). Migrated production to a Kanban system. _Huge_ cost savings resulted, mostly by inventory reduction and WIP reduction plus all the people that used to do the kitting all day long could be assigned to other more productive jobs.

Seriously, every time I see kitting and other more archaic processes happen in companies I politely suggest a visit to a Toyota plant or a similar enterprise. Ok, requires a trip to Japan but for a company with large scale production it is worth it.

We just didn't have any unused kit tailings because there were no more kits.

Big problem, should be fixed asap (we did). All it takes is some minor education and most of all a common database that is accessible to all. Heck, we even had that in the early 80's and that was a business that must be very similar to yours (defense). I had my pick of a very small array of 0.01uF caps and if I needed a specialty one it would have to be formally released and I better had a good explanation handy because that had to be written onto the ECO.

Back then there were VT-whatever terminals for that next to the data book shelves. Which wasn't bad because you had to get off your kiester and exercise the leg muscles so it wasn't all that bad.

True, aquisitions need to be left alone initially so folks don't get spooked. But not forever, there needs to be a gradual migration towards more parts commonality. We've acquired two companies so I know how that goes. Or can go.

Not really. I do not think that is a terribly efficient system. At least there is potential for improvement.

Sure, when it's secret stuff. But it certainly won't forbid using the same 0.01uF cap in other designs.

Screw ups may be low but the scenario you describe can and usually does lead to much higher cost. In gvt or defense land that often doesn't seem to matter to the stakeholders because it's often cost plus accounting. And the taxpayer isn't asked anyhow, he just pays up ...

The LarkinTard Chirps... again.

It is not about the part, it is about the policies.

We do not, nor cannot use a turnkey CM unless they are fully able to replicate the exact BOM.

There are no savings to be found. Changes are not allowed.

Horses for courses. Kitting works for me in a small company with common low cost parts bulk issued and living on the pick and place machines.

My main customer moved to Kanban several years ago. We receive faxes every Friday and despatch on the Monday. The customer keeps looking at China for pcbs but China and Kanban don't mix unless they pay for DHL every week. This week we shipped over 100kg (220 pounds) of boards, that costs a lot on DHL.

Where else would you put the decoupling cap? ...assuming you mean the shortest ('Z') direction "other side".

Screw traces, use the planes. Though that gets tough when there are

Our were able to do that. But even in the beginning where we did not yet do turnkey we were still were fine. The CM got all the stuff, not kitted, all of it. The remaining reels and bulk feeders were then sent back and through a marking system it was made sure that those were used first on the next round. Similar to what grocers call stock rotation.

Then we went to leaving the stock in a controlled space at the CM. The next step was full turn-key.

Tons of savings in our case. The CM was not authorized to change anything but could request changes. Changes then had to be accepted, vetted and ECO'd by us or they wouldn't happen. Just like what the Chinese CM did with my clients regarding going to 10% resistors, they did not change but asked, which is perfect protocol.

For small companies it can work. But only as long as no Goliath comes along and eats your lunch.

I am not much of a believer in JIT between companies far apart. Seen too much grief there. Trucker strikes and such. Kanban has to be implemented carefully, not relying on long distance carriers for time-critical deliveries. And the cost must be factored in. In our case it was only about 15 miles but even there we made the transition to local stock quite soon.

That doesn't work when there are three different 0.01 parts, and one of them is hi rel. There are reasons that the designs, and engineering teams are segregated.

We do not make the numbers where turnkey would be of value.

Of course. I agree. Not all methodologies are the same,and yours is fine in most cases.

IBM used to tout the Basic Beliefs, first set out by Tom Watson:

1. Respect for the individual (i.e. the employees)
2. Customer service
3. Excellence in everything we do

When Gerstner came in, this was changed to the 10 'IBM Principles':

1. Market driven
2. Technology company
3. Minimal bureaucracy (!)
4. blah
5. blah
6. blah
7. blah
8. blah
9. blah
10. IBM shows sensitivity to employee and local communities' needs.

Note the demotion of their people from a ringing #1 of 3 to a very halfhearted #10 of 10.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Thanks Phil... I guess Gerstner must have gone to "contemporary" business school!

I suppose to give the man credit, he did manage to keep IBM going. It seems like IBM was very much in the same group as Tek and HP, having all somewhat lost their way in the late '80s/early '90s.

---Joel

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I'm still in touch with their MD ( Managing Director ). I might just copy the above to him ( with your permission ) as their antics ( amongst several others ) didn't exactly help that company prosper.

Graham

-- due to the hugely increased level of spam please make the obvious adjustment to my email address

I don't believe in segregation :-)

Seriously, that chokes off synergy effects. Between the two divisions that did electronics we were in each others offices all the time.

Having three different 0.01 parts is no problem. You must have a very clear and concise numbering system which will then distinguish between the hi-rel and the two others.

If it's just 10-20 units/year then it wouldn't. But even in a case where we made only 300-400 large systems per year turnkey did make sense, as evidenced by the broad smile of the CFO when he presented the quarter's manufacturing numbers. And this guy wasn't known for smiling a lot :-)

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about half

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above to

exactly

Sure, go ahead. Hopefully it helps to nudge them into the right direction. When I do designs in my consulting office the first thing that happens is the writing of a rather large text document. Then as I go into the schematics all the component specs are added as I go. Never, ever, as a hindsight project. It's always "write-as-you-go".

My favorite perfboard was the Vectorbord 8813 or something like that - pad-per-plated-thru-hole on one side, and "ground plane" (with a void around each perf hole, so no shorts) on the other. I haven't been able to find them on Vector's website. )-;

Maybe nobody prototypes by hand any more.

Thanks, Rich

This may be your lucky day. I bought something like that a couple years ago, but from Twin Industries. The CEO of that client was very surprised they were still around because he remembered them from decades ago.

The others they make: