Technetters,
     
     All this discussion is fine and dandy, but what do your customers 
     really want (define customer expectations)?  Any customer who expects 
     anything less than zero defects is a sucker.  Any supplier whose goal 
     is to supply anything less than zero defects is not a quality 
     supplier.  When I sell my product, I expect nothing to go wrong.  When 
     a customer has a problem we send out field engineers to solve it to 
     minimize the impact to the customer.  Now, I don't expect PCB 
     suppliers to do that, but I do expect them to own up to their defects 
     and take responsibility for them.  We have never had a supplier fail 
     to own up to a defect (although some have tried to pin it back on us; 
     which is sometimes true, anyway).  We have also not normally asked 
     suppliers to reimburse parts or labor costs, although I think it would 
     certainly be reasonable to unless the supplier can show that we didn't 
     take reasonable precautions to prevent the defect from reaching the 
     mfg floor.
     
     You can't measure quality in defects per million.  Quality is measured 
     in customer satisfaction.  If your defect rate (or at least your 
     reaction to the defects) is satisfactory then you will continue to 
     receive business (that is the carrot).  My guess is that the suppliers 
     who are well renowned to have good quality (zero defects), low price, 
     and high capability will have the lion's share of the market.
     
     Anybody with more than 10% market share want to respond????
     
     Roger Held
     Hitachi Computer Products (America), Inc.


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: FW: FW: Liability
Author:  [log in to unmask] at Internet-HICAM-OK
Date:    7/3/96 8:21 AM


Norm,
     
I agree 100%. 
     
Now you are at the point where the shop has ~95% of the Cpk's >1.33 for the 
product specified. The quality systems are in place, process/equipment matching,
measurement tool analysis, DOE, process control system, etc, etc, etc.
     
The PPM level to your customer is ~300. What now? 
     
Note: I have heard that there are some customers that allow a certain amount of 
open traces on the outer layers. It seems like the customer accepted that opens 
were a fact of life and was not pushing or counting opens in the PPM 
calculations. Does anyone know if this is true?
     
We know that 300 PPM is not good enough. What is the method you want to use to 
reduce the level of defects? 
     
The buy back scheme is obviously the stick, but what should the carrot be? We 
have worked hard to develop a two way street for PB spec changes to better fit 
the PB process while pushing to resolve opens, delamination and missing/damaged 
pads, etc. (I am not talking about the special causes either. We are really 
dealing with common cause variation.) Opens are caught at functional test and 
reworked or scrapped, but should these rolled into the cost of quality model and
forgotten? Even so, who should pay for the lost components?
     
What do most PB shops do when they get out of spec material? Do you all charge 
for that material only-laminate, drill bits, bulk H2SO4- or do you charge a 
fixed negotiated price depending on WIP location?
     
I guess I am asking for specifics, some idea from the PB community as to where 
they want to go and what they do with their suppliers.
     
Steve
     
     

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