Component Misplacement Prevention on Tape & Reel

Darin Moreira
Intel Microelectronics, Penang, Malaysia

The paper discusses on the problems faced by the Assembly, Test Manufacturing (ATM) plants of Intel Corporation for a certain Tape and Reel Process. The problem is generic across the other sister factories around the world. The complexity and high occurrence of the problem result in high customer returns and complaints. The problem was looked at by using Lean and TRIZ. We came up with a potential solution that was both elegant and at the same time would potentially solve the menacing issue at the same time the solution proposed surprisingly yields good returns.

Direct Observation in Lean is a very powerful tool as it triggers the mind to look to abnormalities as well as understand the exact problem and not rely on hearsay or hypothesis alone. DO also may provide the observer the high level information on where the potentially problem can be or is at. TRIZ on the other hand helps with understanding the way the tool works as the Component Model is a great way to identify the interaction of the parts and its functions and at the same time provide idea on where to focus our efforts at.

With the help to Lean and TRIZ the intermittent issue that causes us customer complaints has been thoroughly examined and we have come up with elegant solutions that is providing very positive results during the data collection stage. The issue of having component misplacement, missing component that goes undetected as well as false alarm trigger area are all addressed by our approach.

The next step for this project is to validate the solution physically and statistically so that we take into account the potentially fall outs in future to determine the tools accuracy, capability and stability.