The simplest way to reduce inspection is to have less inspectors I suppose.
Once spoke with a bloke who had a neat solution which solved this problem by
human nature. (An expensive consultant type would probably call it self
regulatory peer group management with in a work cell situation). Facing
similar problems of continued over inspection/over repair, the manager split
inspection from repair, with 2 inspectors working to one repairer.
Functions/numbers were rotated, after a few days the lesson was learnt and
normal job functions were resumed.
.

Mike Fenner
Indium Corporation of Europe
 T: + 44 1908 580 400
 F: + 44 1908 580 411
M: + 44 7810 526 317
  -----Original Message-----
  From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Stephen R. Gregory
  Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 11:50 PM
  To: [log in to unmask]
  Subject: Re: [TN] Inspection Criteria


  Hi John!!

  Like Kathy said, magnification for inspection is spelled out in the 610,
and
  the J-STD too...I would quote them, but I don't have them in front of
me...I
  do know 30X is pushing things a whole lot!

  This issue is a never ending debate. Are your inspectors finding REAL
  defects? I go through this stuff quite a bit too...so I understand your
  frustrations.

  An ol' crusty QA manager told me a while back, is that there are two kinds
of
  inspectors, those that inspect to accept, and those that inspect to
reject.
  He also said that if it takes more than just a couple of seconds to decide
if
  something is good or bad, it's probably good...leave it alone.

  I go through this stuff all the time...especially with class-II stuff
here.
  The latest battle has been with barrel-fill. You're allowed a 75% barrel
fill
  with class-II stuff...

  The inspectors complain that they can't tell if it's 74% or 76%, so they
  reject everything that doesn't have a full barrel fill...(where's my
  Excedrin?). In turn, this just conditions all our operators to touch-up
  things that they don't need to touch-up...and it goes on and on, and on,
and
  on...

  Have tried to talk to them about the issues when re-heating solder joints,
  (intermetallics, and that it's NOT increasing the functionality or
  reliability of the joints).

  But it's like like I'm talking to a wall. Inspectors, as you have learned,
  need to feel that they must find something...I've only met a few
inspectors
  that I can hand a board to, and get it back without red-arrows on it
  somewhere...whether there is defects on it or not. That's their job (in
their
  mind), to find something wrong...if they can't find something wrong, then
  they've missed something, and not done their job...

  If it sounds like I'm getting down on inspectors, I'm really not. There's
  been more than just a few times in my career that I was really glad that
  there was a very detailed, picky, inspector, that caught a mistake from
  production that was pretty serious before we shipped to the
customer...stuff
  happens. But on the other hand, there has been times that they've been so
  focused on solder joints, that they've totally missed that there were
  components installed, that were wrong values, wrong polarity, etc...

  I'm not saying that you need a QA inspector to tell you when you load
  something wrong, that responsibilty should fall squarely on the set-up and
  first article inspection from the people that are running the line, but
you
  know what I'm driving at...

  -Steve Gregory-