Cost Waste of Circuit Board Production and Countermeasures

Seven major wastes in PCB production, namely: waste of waiting; Waste of handling; Waste of defective products; The waste of action; Waste of processing; Waste of inventory; Make excessive (early) waste.
Waiting waste: phenomena such as idle equipment, idle equipment, unplanned downtime, production shortage, etc. Generally, the reasons for waiting are: weak orders or insufficient orders, unbalanced production lines, improper planning, work stoppage, abnormal quality, etc. For example, the switching between different materials on the production line, if the preparation is not sufficient, it is easy to cause the waste of waiting; Problems in the upper process sometimes lead to the shutdown of the next process, leaving people with nothing to do.
Waste of handling: it is an action that does not produce added value, and all work that does not produce value is a waste. The main phenomena of waste are: the manual transportation of production materials from warehouse to workshop, the transportation of semi-finished products in upper and lower processes, the transportation in the processing process, etc. Factory layout, excessive or premature production, inventory transfer, plan change, etc. are the main causes of waste in handling.
Waste of defective products: Repair, rework and scrap of products are regarded as waste of defective products. In the process of product production, any nonconforming product will cause waste of materials, equipment, labor, etc., and any repair, rework, and scrapping will be an additional cost. If the defective products are not effectively controlled, customers will complain or return the goods, or miss the delivery date, and serious problems will lose customers’ confidence. The main reason for the waste of defective products is that people are busy fighting fires, rather than effective prevention. At the source of production, the unqualified raw materials and semi-finished products will be prevented from flowing into the next production process.
Waste of actions: frequent taking, excessive bending, long walking distance, frequent walking back and forth, searching for tools or materials, repeated correction of alignment accuracy, repeated inspection of products, and other repeated actions and unnecessary actions, which waste time and physical strength. If the design of process flow, operation specification, auxiliary tools and equipment layout is reasonable, many actions can be omitted.
The waste of processing is also called the waste of over-processing: the waste of processing has two meanings, the first is redundant processing and over-accurate processing. The second aspect is redundant operation time and auxiliary equipment. If QC in the molding process has already measured the external dimensions once, PQC in the quality department will repeat the measurement again, which is a waste of processing. In order to achieve the same purpose, some processing programs can be omitted, replaced, reorganized or merged, and such redundant processing programs are the waste of processing. Long manufacturing cycle, reduced production efficiency, frequent classification, testing and inspection, and extra processing are the main causes of processing waste.
Waste of inventory: Lean production thinks that overproduction and excess inventory are the biggest waste, and overproduction is finally reflected in excess inventory. The inventory of raw materials, equipment accessories, semi-finished products and finished products will not generate any added value, and increase the operating cost. Inventory not only takes up space, but also increases the cost of manual management. There are many reasons for the waste of inventory, such as the complexity of products, low efficiency of processes, unbalanced production plans, ineffective market forecasting and management, unreasonable incentive system and many other factors, which will lead to overproduction or excessive waste of inventory.
Excessive (early) waste of manufacturing refers to the production that exceeds the necessary quantity and production ahead of schedule: excessive production will lead to problems such as early consumption of raw materials, waste of manpower and facilities, occupation of space, increased handling of materials and products, and increased management costs. The reasons include: pursuing the local efficiency of the production workshop, ignoring the overall efficiency of the factory, blindly overproducing or putting more allowance, long time for changing the material number in the process, unbalanced production plan, over-designed equipment and capacity, and not producing according to the plan, etc.
For these seven wastes, PCB production cost management can start from the following points:
On-the-spot observation method: take the production process as a unit, observe each process section and each equipment on the spot for 4 ~ 8 hours, and record the working hours, equipment usage, equipment downtime, refueling number time, abnormal quality, etc. You can use on-the-spot video and other methods to list the seven major wastes according to the observation and recording results, count the equipment crop rate (or equipment comprehensive efficiency) and the working conditions of the personnel, find out the waste problems, and then sort out the waste problems.
Quick type change: record the time of each current process flow → distinguish internal and external work → change internal work into external work → reduce internal work → reduce external work → standardize.
Kanban management: Kanban is used as an instruction for production and transportation, and displays information such as production material number and production quantity. Arrange the plan in time, produce in time, reduce the inventory of work-in-process, and also expose problems in time, such as equipment downtime, abnormal quality and so on, so as to achieve the purpose of improvement.
Standardization: documentation of operating standards, continuous training according to documents, and follow-up of achievement measurement.
There are also some detailed cost control capabilities. For example, for the chemical reagents needed in the production process, usually PCB manufacturers will outsource a certain process to the reagent supplier, and negotiate the total price with the supplier in advance. The supplier is responsible for the specific amount of reagents consumed. However, Jingwang will help chemical medicine suppliers to save the dosage of medicine by optimizing its own production process, and then the suppliers will offer discounts to give back.
The waste of circuit board production in the factory is like not tightening the tap. The looser it is, the more it will be wasted and the thinner the profit will be.