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Ask the Experts

April 30, 2007 - Updated
July 4, 2007 - Originally Posted

Cost per placement for SMT line

Is there an industry standard to calculate the cost per placement for the SMT line?

Mohamed Shawky

Expert Panel Responses

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.

Ken Bliss
President & CEO - Retired, Bliss Industries, Inc.

Retired - Mr. Bliss has 20+ years experience creating process methods that improve profitability by maximizing hidden unused capacity and throughput. Ken has expertise in all areas of manufacturing specializing in electronics assembly.

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

Bob Black
North America Sales Manager, Essegi Automation

Mr. Black was the President and Co-Founder of Zevatech in 1977 and introduced first Pick and Place System at Nepcon West 1980. Bob is now the President, CEO and Co-Founder of Juki Automation Systems. He is also a Co-Founder of the SMEMA Council of IPC. He serves as a member of SMTA and SEMI..

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