Is there something wrong with the quality of China’s printed circuit boards? While many have said Chinese fabrication is finally on par with other PCB producing nations, that might not be the case.
Hearing from one high-level technologist talk about the problems with the Chinese PCB quality came as something of a surprise. Could this be one man's opinion? However, hearing the same message from two different experts residing on two different continents—within in the space of one hour—was quite surprising. It suggests that Chinese PCB quality problems might be more widespread than one would imagine.
First, Happy Holden, one of the industry’s most respected technologists sees a fundamental flaw in the way boards are being built in China and he believes management style may be at fault.
A top-down driven management style leaves engineers doing what they are told rather than creatively attacking the real issues. Holden referred back to the teachings of W. Edwards Deming as the missing link. The lack of statistical quality methods leaves many Chinese fabricators with very small margins and constant struggles as they work to meet their customer demands for cheaper and cheaper circuit boards. This pressure has managers looking to the latest technology to drive efficiencies, which Holden believes is the wrong approach and simply masks the problem. A quality focus is what’s needed. That will change the industry in China as it did the Japanese industry in the 1980s.
Within an hour of Happy’s interview at ECWC 11, EIPC Technical Director Michael Weinhold commented on some of the problems Europeans are seeing with PCBs imported from China. He suggested the problem was related to a lack of circuit board fundamentals, and that price pressures are causing companies to skip some of critical steps in making reliable PCBs.
Weinhold went on to say the EIPC is driving an effort to encourage manufacturing excellence in European PCB companies, especially those manufacturing in China. This suggests that even Western fabricators need to get back to the basics of building highly reliable PCBs in the most efficient way possible.
A Free Step in the Right Direction
Happy Holden also offered the link below, which he believes is a requirement for engineers. The book is free and invaluable to all engineers inside or outside the PCB industry.
8 Chapters for the “Process Engineer”
Exploratory Data Analysis
Measurement Process Characterization
Product Process Characterization
Process Models
Process Improvement
Process or Product Monitoring and Control
Product and Process Comparison
Assessing Product Reliability
www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/stoc.htm
This handbook is approximately 600 pages, but it could prove invaluable for engineers wanting to make process improvements without throwing money at problems.
沒有留言:
張貼留言