KIC’s 24-7 continuous monitoring system helps Paramit meet its zero-defects objective
Case Study
KIC’s 24-7 continuous
monitoring system helps
Paramit meet its
zero-defects objective
Founded in 1990 and based in Morgan Hill, CA, Paramit Corporation is a high-end, high-mix contract
manufacturer with a vision of providing specialized electronics manufacturing services with a strong engineering
and systems focus. During the past 18 years, the company has grown steadily, enjoyed sustained profitability,
and today employs more than 290 people with an engineering staff of over 30.
Paramit provides fully integrated system (OIS) monitoring software that There were two issues to consider within
manufacturing and test services to monitors the various sub-events in a their reflow process. The first was how
leading OEMs in the semiconductor, placement machine and shows trends in to ensure that every board going through
telecommunications, networking, medical, terms of how the machine is performing reflow experienced the same time/
industrial controls, radio frequency (RF) in real time. For example, excessive pick temperature profile that was set during the
and other high-technology industries. issues on a particular component can be profiling exercise. The second was how
The company’s quality objective was noted and trended, prompting appropriate to develop and assign an accurate time/
to develop a zero-defect surface mount action by the operator before it results in a temperature profile without the use of
process. Paramit approached it from a defect. loaded PCAs. This is a problem faced often
‘first principles’ perspective. They asked The reflow portion of this was the third in the NPI environment where there is not
themselves the question “What constitutes process, and extremely critical to Paramit. Continued on page 41
a solder joint in the SMT process?” Simply
answered, it is the interaction of pin
(device termination), pad and paste. These
interactions, in turn, create the three
processes in SMT—the printing process,
the placement process and the reflow
process.
Paramit’s goal was to make each one of
these processes completely closed-looped so
that a defect could not move downstream
from one process to the other. For the
printing side, the company implemented
in-line solder paste inspection, ensuring
that every deposit met the process
specifications. Only a PCB with a zero
defect print can go into the placement
process.
SMD Placement is a ‘near-zero-defect
process.’ It is so because not all the defect
opportunities associated with a sub-event
of a ‘pick, recognize, orient and place’
chain are machine verifiable. Paramit
decided to implement on-line information
KIC’s Auto-Focus software runs in conjunction with the profiling software, leveraging previous profiles to predict new ones
38 – Global SMT & Packaging - August 2008 www.globalsmt.net
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68