Production Problems

LINE DOWN!!


You've passed prototype validation, compliance, qualification and have been running hundreds of thousands of units a month...until now.

ESD issues have suddenly crept up and there's a twice-daily engineering status meeting with the manufacturing managers. The cc: list on the status update continues to grow.

What. Is. The. Root. Cause?!

This happens to the best designs, but from this point a cool head, methodical approach and a little luck are required.

While a lot of time and effort can be spent chasing bad assumptions and dead-ends, many of these can be eliminated with an across-the-board (literally) ESD Susceptibility scan.

  • Has something changed on the board assembly?
      Does a sample scan of the system show any new vulnerabilities which were not recorded on the prototype or early production runs??
  • Has a particular component changed?
      Substitutions and cost reductions without a PCN can be eliminated from the list of suspects as above.
  • Hard failures are self evident, but soft errors are not.
      Hard failures cause damage that can be analyzed at the chip level. Soft failures leave few if any breadcrumbs.