I am not aware of any standard for cost per placement. However the simple method I suggest is to take an 8 hour shift of time, figure out how many components were placed and divide the two numbers. That gives you time per placement in seconds or 10ths of a second. You then take your companies standard cost per hour to run the line and multiply those two numbers and there is your true cost per placement.

Interestingly, once you do this I also suggest you take the time per second it took to place the components and compare that to the machine rates placement speed and see how close you are. If you are like most plants you see a difference of upto 40% slower than expected. Downtime during changeover and feeder exhaust reloads will eat up hours of what should be uptime.

If your numbers are way off as I noted here you need to work toward getting changeover to less than 15 minutes total and feeder exhaust reloads to 20 seconds. The exact (SMT Vision Award Winning) process methods for doing this is free and available at www.blissindutries.com click on "Bliss University" and then click on "SMT feeders". If you do it right you will dramatically reduce your cost per placement immediately once you make any needed changes to get closer to the manufacture spec.

Not yet. But the SMEMA Council of IPC is working on such a standard.