Introducing New Technology into an EMS Environment

The electronics manufacturing services industry (EMSI) has grown at a staggering rate. From 1998 to 1999, EMS revenue growth was 30 percent, with sales of $78 billion dollars for 1999. It is projected that 2000 will end with EMS revenue in the range of $101 billion with a total available market (TAM) of $772 billion. The fuel driving increased outsourcing is OEMs' desire to divest themselves of manufacturing and assembly operations, effectively allowing them to focus their capital investments toward developing new technologies and gaining market share.

In doing so, outsourcing requirements are drastically changing. Reflecting back to 1995, the typical OEM was simply looking to achieve a lower product cost, absorb overflow of work, provide technical inputs for manufacturing and assembly, and then build to specification and manufacture. Today, the average OEM is looking for an increase in return on assets (ROA), volume flexibility, new product introduction (NPI), product design, agility and supply chain management. The focus of this article is on the processes associated with new technology introduction into the contract electronics manufacturing (CEM) environment and the value-add to the OEM. The key driver to success is a customer-centric focus from a cross-functional team deployment that utilizes DFx activities and a solid NPI process.

No business stays in business long without doing what is right for the investor. One could also say that what is best for the investor is also best for the customer base. Therefore, successful manufacturing operations keep the customer at the center of their business. CEMs that fail to recognize their customer base's technological needs inevitably fail to grow with their customers. Given the vital nature of a CEM's continuing technological competency, it is imperative to have a controlled process for introducing new manufacturing capabilities to support the advancement in technology.

What does technology really mean to the CEM? Given that a CEM's real value is service, technology encompasses any and everything associated with providing that service. Although information technology, supply chain management and field repair/service are inherently technologically challenging, the core of the introduction processes discussed are focused at assembly and fabrication skill sets.

The typical technological drivers for increasing product and assembly technology are a result of the need for cost reduction, increased performance/functionality and/or miniaturization. What customers have expected from increasing technological contents of products and the impact on assembly techniques has remained static. Customers expect that the technological innovation used to help them achieve their product introduction sustains a cost-effective character throughout the product life possesses an acceptable level of reliability and quality for the targeted market place.

How is technological deployment different in a CEM environment? Primarily, the differentiation often lies in the access to comprehensive manufacturing engineering teams that have a wide and varied level of exposure to critical aspects of all phases of the product assembly.

Secondly, the environment is typically much faster paced. Finally, the deployment of innovative equipment and processes is transferred to the CEM. From an expertise standpoint, the methods, materials, and machinery expertise associated with assembly resides with the assembler. The vertically integrated CEM has even more to offer in this respect. Unimpeded access to plastics, metal working, cable and harness assembly, PCB assembly and final integration support engineers is invaluable. Because of the increased pace, CEMs are less laden with "red tape" than OEMs, and often have to share a pool of resources. This sharing activity forces workgroups and teams to operate very efficiently. The transfer of capital cost associated with equipment deployment and process development allows the OEM to successfully focus its capital resources on intellectual property development and other aspects essential to its business growth.

As most CEMs are experiencing in this recent technological downturn, there is also tremendous value to OEMs because CEMs are left "holding the bag" on under-utilized capital equipment. Every step of the way through the new technology introduction phase, the CEM adds value. The deployment of cross-functional teams increase the probability of technology introduction success. Likewise, the efficiency under which most CEMs operate facilitates faster times to market with new technology. Efficiencies in the form of providing input and design assistance for error avoidance, commonly referred to as DFx and NPI processes.

A cross-functional team should be developed to consider the customer's technological needs. The team should be headed by a technical program manager who intimately understands the customer's target market place, the requirements for product introduction and availability, and the deliverables with respect to quality and pricing. The team balance should consist of engineering representation (process, design, test, and reliability), procurement specialists, quality engineering, and assembly personnel. Upon forming the cross-functional team, the program manager will initiate the new product introduction processes and manage the day-to-day activities to achieve the required timeline until the product is successfully launched into production. Tactical and strategic materials procurement must focus on the relationship required to sustain the supply chain.

Suppliers for the new technology must have solid processes that insure the delivery of a quality product on time and at the quoted cost. Strategically speaking, shifts in market demand must also be well understood by the specialist such that shortages can be anticipated and planned for. Likewise, when there are gluts in the market place, more and more pressure can be applied to the supply chain to deliver the material at a better-than-budgeted price.

Concurrent engineering activities consist of coordinating process and manufacturing engineers, test engineers, reliability engineering, and quality to achieve repeatable and cost effective processes. In the case of circuit card assembly (CCA), the effort may be as simple as assuring that the new technology is accommodated by the existing equipment and processes, or as complex as the identification of new process chemistries, thermal processes for reflow and repair, rework, cleaning, and testing. Irregardless of the complexity of the technology introduction, the cross-functional engineering expertise is critical.

In order to achieve the highest level of quality throughout the assembly of the new product, the challenges of employing new technologies must be considered in the context of the NPI process. The typical NPI process consists of a product kick-off meeting and a manufacturing readiness review. Upon identification of deliverables and challenges, functional areas are assigned as appropriate. A timeline is established for follow-up meetings to address status, and ultimately a manufacturing readiness review is scheduled. The customer, being at the center of the NPI, is included in all necessary correspondence and plays a vital role in achieving the targeted launch date.

The NPI processes focus on a controlled approach for assembly, materials procurement, testing, repair, service, sales, marketing, and reliability assessment. Assembly documentation can often make or brake the production assembly of products in volume. The goal is to develop assembly aids so that operators and assemblers have no doubt about the process settings for machinery or the assembly steps to be performed. Often this requires the use of tools such as computer aided manufacturing (CAM) software packages. These tools effectively take raw data in the form of CAD files, the bills of materials (BOMs), approved vendor listings (AVLs), and in the case of CCAs — gerbers and centroid files, and they compile the information into a single format that is usable by the machinery and the assemblers.

This approach is important because it minimizes the opportunity for error by operators and assemblers by eliminating the need to search through multiple data sets to find the information required to assemble the product. Another advantage is the time saved by having a single reference.

In the process of determining the assembly techniques required, a process flow is developed. In the case of CCA, the current challenges are assembling 0201 components, CSP and bare die packaging, and Pb-free soldering. The approach to successfully addressing these assembly challenges in a CEM environment must be comprehensive enough to span a variety of market places and product form factors. In order to develop comprehensive processes, CEMs will often decouple the process technology from the product, and develop assembly test vehicles. Using this approach, controlled experimentation will be performed that will consider factors such as PCB construction, flux chemistries, solder paste deposition processes and tooling design, as well as reflow, cleaning, and rework/repair processes. To effectively determine the quality of the assembly process, the CEM will perform both nondestructive and destructive analyses of the assembled test vehicle. Such analyses may consist of temperature and vibration cycling followed by micro-sectional analysis of the interconnection architecture.

Tools such as highly accelerated life testing (HALT) are a valuable tool in design verification testing as well as developing a manufacturing screening test in the form of highly accelerated stress screening (HASS) or environmental stress screening (ESS). In the case of metal working, the new technology driver may be developing soft-tooled approaches to assembling cost-effective frames and enclosure weldments. This is best achieved by using laser-cutting tools for flat sheet metal and tube stock. The list continues throughout the disciplines required to assemble a completed unit. The CEM, in short, approaches new technology introduction from a perspective of satisfying a myriad of market segments and customer demands. Assembly technology developed by the CEM is comprehensive. The luxury of developing technology to support a single-market need does not exist for the CEM;. flexibility is the name of the game.

During the new technology introduction process, the CEM often provides invaluable concurrent engineering efforts in the form of design-error avoidance. In fact, the trend has been for the OEM to outsource the physical design engineering effort because the assembler possesses the core talent to design a better product right out of the gate. From a CCA perspective, the DFx tools are in the form of the PCB's design rule checks (DRCs), consideration of panelization for optimum throughput, layout to accommodate ergonomics of inspection and hand assembly, and a focus on feature design to reduce process related defects. From a metal working perspective, the focus is on minimizing the time associated with manufacture and speeding the metal part to production via eliminating the need for hard tooling.

From a final integration or systems level assembly perspective, the focus is on design-for-thermal compliance, ease of assembly, and resistance to vibration due to transport and operation. Irregardless of the assembly stage, the CEM adds value by contributing expertise in assembly.

Technology introduction in the CEM environment is best facilitated by a controlled approach to NPI with an emphasis in DFx activities and the deployment of cross-functional teams. During the NPI process, the OEM has access to assembly expertise that often does not exist in-house.

During this process, all NPI aspects are considered with an emphasis on establishing solid processes for assembly, supply chain management, quality and reliability, as well as compliance to established regulatory standards. Controlled builds and qualification tests are performed on test vehicles or via sample parts to assess the viability of assembly capability and reliability. During this process, the OEM realizes a higher return on investment due to the deferment of capital expense tied to this effort, as well as, and avoidance of risk associated with the capital required to launch new technologies.