As part of developing a comprehensive plan to create a much improved component management system for a 600-employee $300 million semiconductor products manufacturing company....I ran a series of interviews with the department heads that revealed a wide number of problems in managing their product manufacturing flow from concept to shipment to customers. Here's what they said:
1. No defined responsibilities.
2. Too many details on terms used or specified in the processes used here.
3. Data flow packages (travelers) contain far more information to act on then is needed...bogging down the cycle times.
4. What is conveyed to customers is not recorded for reference or shared between affected departments.
5. Limited coordination with affected suppliers when there are product changes.
6. Too many revisions during the advancing flow of a product manufacture without any reason nor record till the product has completed the entire process...then, and maybe....a review might be done.
7. Our engineers design cycles are slowed due to too many administrative tasks. These tasks are causing interruptions to their focus on designing.
8. Incomplete, inappropriate and non-compliant material and supplier specifications.
9. Limited controls to manager PCB design guidelines, formats, process and documentation. Too much making it up as it goes from one design cycle to the next.
10. Unable to track down where some of the parts we get are actually coming from.
11. Engineers do not want to take the time to find out if a part they need already exists in inventory or if it is being used in a current design.
12. Too much disagreement on which specifications are important....causing delays in selecting best parts to use in a design from one team to the next.
13. Not a lot of thought into how specifications of one part will affect others. Too many assumptions that cause problems later in the design cycle.
14. Engineering and manufacturing not working together to determine, per part and per quality requirement, the important criteria.
15. Too many details from a datasheet on a part being supplied to team members who have no need for such details. This creates confusion as to how to apply their responsibilities to such data.
16. Engineering teams unable to assess changes they will need to make when moving from small quantity production to high volume. The thought is that building a quantity of one is just as valid with the same parts, design and process as it would be to build for millions, for example.
17. Different departments disagree on just how much of each design can use SMT devices over through-hole. Too many engineers too stubborn and just want to move all through-hole parts to SMT devices.
18. Drawing attributes, custom and semi-custom parts often prove unrealistic to purchasing to support for production....meaning engineers don't want to address purchasing/production realities.
19. The adlib, make it up along the way, unsupported documentation, unfinished ECNs, lack of proper signoffs, the massive amount of redlined drawings, the wild revisions thrown in at the time the parts are released to purchasing....this needs to stop and be better managed, documented and measured for consistency with department policies and procedures.
20. Both old and revised procedures are being used.
21. Engineers do not note what specification variables are acceptable....they just assume the specs they supply should be met without question.
22. Engineers assume, once they have selected parts, that suppliers should simply have them in stock. In their mind...if the part is listed by the manufacturer...then it's available.
23. Part request forms do not contain enough information needed for making decisions further down the pipeline.
24. Too many procedures duplicated in the flow.
25. Too many drawings with errors are being released to suppliers with the thinking, if found by them, can just be revised while the supplier attempts to make the part.
26. There are no supporting documentation that explains how to fill out forms nor the meaning of the nomenclature on them.
27. There are no prompts on forms to cause engineers to consider what to fill out. So ...those parts are usually skipped by them.
28. There is a lack of ongoing training to understand and follow procedures.
29. Use MRP, ERP and PLM software is slowed to a crawl due to lack of training to understand the terminology used in them. Much of the use is a guess along the way with no consistency and thus causing lack of or incorrect input.
30. Documentation is extremely informal....used in whatever manner a user deems fitting on any given day and at any given time.
31. Few want to use the management software as it is seen as bogging down an already highly impacted work flow.
32. BOMS that should have drawings....don't.
33. Use of management software lacks a structure of different participation levels.
34. Many processes and procedures cannot handle the needs of different departments, but there are no updates to do so.
35. We really need to start condensing the amount of specifications we are documenting.
36. Process guidelines and specifications we use have no central location where we can access them in an effort to be consistent.
37. There is a need to use industry and agency standards, but there is allocated time to examine them nor implement them into the flow. Everyone wants them, but nobody wants the responsibility. Everyone knows of their importance for use in design, PCB rules and part qualification, for example.
38. Present system is inadequate to support reliable and consistent materials planning and management of manufacturing.
39. Pressure to change procedures puts too much pressure on the whole list of affected systems in the flow. And so it's skipped.
40. Tremendous resistance to change throughout the company even tho everyone knows it would be good thing....boils down to time in the midst of such a heavy-laden process flow...so it seems that is.
41. Much of our custom and semi-custom part specifications could be better rather than 'this will do'.
42. We need newer and more efficient capital equipment.
43. Too many headaches created by too many deep-in-the-process-flow problems coming up too late in the game of things.
And all this boils down to zero risk management. I can't emphasize enough the need for regular review of process flow throughout a company. The cost of not doing so means higher costs down the line.
