If it’s not one thing, it’s another, right? First, the global disruption of Covid brought everything to a screeching halt. Then, as the engine of commerce tried to reignite, supply chain issues spiked resource costs and logistics. Then, as production supply started to catch up with demand, labor shortages forced many small-to-medium-sized American manufacturing companies to cut back on shiftwork and secondary service offerings.
Everyone has been forced to adapt to an ever-changing business landscape, and MPL is no exception. To better serve our clients, we’ve doubled down on the critical success factors that optimize our PCB assembly services. These relate to inventory management, environmental control, component optimization, and automation.
Inventory Management
In a global marketplace where price always seems to be the last word, potential profits are regularly sacrificed to poor inventory management. You must accurately count and recount your resources to preserve your company's component investment. This means tracking parts throughout the production cycle, counting them upon inspection at arrival, on the shelves in your storeroom, and during regular spot checks along the assembly line. We use a component counter with pocket check verification. This ensures there are no missing holes in inventory and guarantees a 100% accurate count.
Environmental Control
With more and more parts becoming a precious commodity, waste resulting from preventable damage is a killer. You must control your production environment to protect your moisture-sensitive components and keep them from the expansion that ultimately leads to premature product failure in the field. We preserve our components using J-STD-033 dry storage containers that maintain below 5% relative humidity.
Component Optimization
When components are exposed to outside moisture, all is not lost. There are several content optimization tricks to help you recover from some of that damage. First, we restore them using our J-STD-033B baking dry box, bringing them up to a safe 40°C and resetting their shelf life. Second, we rework boards to reclaim good components and repurpose them on other boards.
Automation
Not enough bodies to fill the seats? There’s a fix for that too. Companies are turning toward machines and automation to maintain or increase production volume without human operators to solve ever-growing labor problems. We use a selective solder machine for mixed technology boards with through-hole parts. This allows us to achieve the volume of several hand-solder technicians and increase the consistent quality of the end product. While these machines may seem like an expensive investment, we recognize the value they bring to our productivity.
Practicing reliable PCB Assembly Services can be challenging, but there are many benefits. First, by carefully counting and accounting for inventory, you’ll successfully manage loss and minimize the associated costs. Second, you’ll streamline your production by investing in automated equipment and enjoy the added benefits of improved quality consistency and lower labor costs.
Thanks to our ability to adapt to today’s challenges, we help our clients become more internally responsive, better at pivoting, and more efficient overall. Combined, these add up to lower production costs, higher product quality, and greater long-term profitability!
