Printed Circuit Design & Fab Online Magazine - Features

Features

Does sustained ISO 9001 and Lean Six Sigma deliver success?

Sustaining quality management systems and continuous improvement strategies is critical for retaining a competitive advantage in the printed circuit board industry. Implementing and sustaining both ISO 9001 and Lean Six Sigma provides quality improvements, enhances organizational performance, creates efficiencies, increases market share, improves financial performance, and reduces product reliability risk. This quantitative correlational study evaluates critical success factors for implementing and sustaining ISO 9001 and Lean Six Sigma. Survey data were collected from the North American printed circuit board (PCB) industry. Canonical correlations were used for data analysis. A statistical correlation was found between critical success factors for implementing and sustaining ISO 9001 and Lean Six Sigma. Three canonical variates were extracted and interpreted.

Quality has become a key process indicator for manufacturing and service companies. Quality is a strategic priority for all modern businesses.1 Improving and sustaining quality is a critical organizational strategy to retain customers in today’s globally competitive environment. Quality management is used to proactively find solutions to current and future cost and risk problems.

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An interview with Colombia’s largest EMS company.

Colombia is the 28th largest country by population and the 38th largest by nominal GDP. Residing as South America’s connection into Central America, it is in the same time zone as the Eastern US during daylight saving time.

Invertronica was founded in early 2003 in Colombia and includes several companies involved in the design, prototyping and manufacturing of electronics products. Those companies include Tecrea, an electronics design and engineering unit; LosComponentes.com.co, a parts distributor, and Colcircuitos, the largest EMS company in Colombia. It can move fast: 24 hours from design to assembly.

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A look back at friends and colleagues who left us in 2021.

Isamu Akasaki

Semi genius - Akasaki

Isamu Akasaki, 92, Japanese physicist invented the first efficient blue LED and shared the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics.

Robert “Bobby” Baker, 60, Sanmina/SCI senior buyer.

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High-speed circuits are used more or less everywhere in electronic applications today.

A new platform for streamlining procurement takes shape.

Supply chain has been the story of the past year, and a new face to the industry proposes to help resolve that by connecting electronics engineers with printed circuit board assemblers.

Vincent Bedát is a mechanical engineer and recent MBA graduate of the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also founder of a San Francisco-based startup called Volthub. I came across Volthub as part of an announcement of the finalists for the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. That program has various aspects to it, but in short it’s a way to match early-stage teams with industry experts and entrepreneurs, and perhaps gain some seed money along the way. Some of the companies that have been part of the competition over the years include HubSpot and Akamai Technologies.

Vincent Bedat
Vincent Bedát

Bedát hails from Zurich, Switzerland, where he also studied, graduating with a master’s in mechanical engineering from ETH Zurich. He then went on to work at the robotics startup Synapticon in Stuttgart, Germany, as a mechanical engineer and eventually project manager.

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A new study reveals emerging applications for attaching very-fine-pitch parts using low-temp methods.

Electrically conductive adhesives (ECAs) have been touted for decades as a potential replacement for solder. Technology roadmaps by organizations ranging from IPC to the Surface Mount Council often listed ECAs as a “coming” technology, and scores of papers have been presented highlighting possible uses and likely end-products.

In early October, the international research firm IDTechEx released a new study called “Electrically Conductive Adhesives 2022-2032: Technologies, Markets, and Forecasts.” Matthew Dyson, Ph.D., a senior technology analyst at IDTechEx specializing in printed, organic and flexible electronics, spoke with Mike Buetow about the study’s findings.

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