How Kodiak’s Test Solutions Increased Quality in Printed Circuit Board Assembly

As a manager of your company, you always want to give and receive high-quality products. When you arrange an agreement with a contract manufacturer and don’t receive quality products, how long would you allow time, resources, and money to be wasted on products that arrive defective? One company’s growing dissent with the quality they received from their contract manufacturer after approximately 15% of the printed circuit board assembly ordered came in defective, they opted to pursue an alternate supplier. Kodiak Assembly Solutions came to the rescue, increasing their first-pass yield to 99.9% and helped the company to reduce wasted time, resources, and growing discontent from a manufacturer that couldn’t consistently produce quality products.

Increasing frustration with a growing pile of defective assemblies

When the company ordered their printed circuit boards from their contract manufacturer, they experienced a high percentage of defective assemblies. Their technicians lacked the time needed to troubleshoot the defective boards and the option to stop production would interrupt the production flow on the factory floor, so they simply set the products aside. Frustration mounted as the growing bone-pile of defective assemblies increased, with no time to sort the rhyme or reason as to why the production of their printed circuit boards resulted in defective products. The large percentage of defective assemblies became unable to be ignored and when the company partnered with Kodiak Assembly Solution to take over the printed circuit board assembly for them, they learned that living with defective assemblies didn’t have to be their option.

Kodiak Assembly’s flying probe test

With a flying probe test, Kodiak Assembly suggested they could increase the first pass yield of the printed circuit board assembly for the company. In manufacturing and assembling circuit boards, a flying probe test can be used when testing low- to mid-volume production. The test uses electro-mechanically controlled probes to access components on printed circuit assemblies. Not only does this flying probe test offer an easy way to detect shorts, opens, missing components, wrong value components, wrong polarities and more, the technology is a cost-effective solution that cuts the debug time for clients.

Kodiak Assembly developed an electronic test solution utilizing the Takaya Flying Probe system. With electrical verification and test, quality levels of the printed circuit board assembly soared.

Producing a high first-pass yield in printed circuit boards

When manufacturing and assembling products, a first pass yield (sometimes called a throughput yield) is a good measure of the effectiveness of the process and the elimination of waste from that process. Other measures of productivity and efficiency often fail to account for the cost of rework. In many facilities, rework can mean a significant portion of time and value added to the final production. How first pass yield is calculated is by the number of units coming out of a process divided by the number of units going into that process over a specific amount of time. Only units with no rework or scrap are counted as coming out of an individual process.

For a company experiencing 15% of defective assemblies coming out of production for printed circuit board assembly, a higher first pass yield was necessary to reduce the time, resources, and product the company had lost during the production process with their previous contract manufacturer. With the use of the flying probe test, Kodiak Assembly produced the circuit boards, which resulted in a 99.9% first pass yield. The success of this high first pass yield led to the ability to quickly get caught up with production requirements and the company was able to save valuable resources by refocusing their technicians on other duties.

Putting your company in the hands of a manufacturer means you’re also putting your reputation in their hands, too. Don’t waste resources like time and money by putting your time and money toward a manufacturer you can’t trust. When a manufacturer spits out products with defective qualities, those products essentially go to waste – slowing your overall output and wasting time, energy, resources trying to solve the problem and prevent it from happening in the future. For trusted production and test solutions, contact Kodiak Assembly Solutions today.