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www.us-tech.com
May/June, 2012
PCBA Bonepiles: The Neglected Green Revenue Stream B
By Robert A. Boguski, Jr., President, Datest, Fremont, CA
onepiles -- collections of PCB assemblies that are defective and can’t be rescued. When an
assembled board is deemed unre- pairable, it frequently is written off and placed into the “bonepile.” This happens most frequently at OEM facilities; however, it is not uncommon for electronics manufacturing service companies to also have such accumu- lations or piles of boards. Often, com- panies exhaust their troubleshooting budget and even write the failures off their books. In spite of this, written-off boards frequently continue to reside in warehouses, in the “bonepile”. Bonepiles have existed for as
long as electronic products have been built. They’re unpopular because, obviously, they represent foregone revenue or “dead money.” Typically, the bigger the company, the bigger the bonepile. Every company seems to
have one, but, admitting it and ex - pend ing effort to reduce or eliminate it is another matter.
labor and materials, but, how much? Who knows? Enter test-centered bonepile
Complex bonepile PCB being tested.
What can be done to solve (or at
least reduce) this vexing industry problem of pure waste or scrap? What about environmental considerations? Common sense tells us there must be some value in these piles of discarded
rehabilitation, a.k.a. Bone Pile Re - pair — more specifically, bonepile rehabilitation at the board level, and in volume. In the United States, Datest, leveraging 28 years of experi- ence in PCBA production testing and test engineering, is busily innovating bonepile recovery. This involves recovery, rehabilitation and analysis of failed PCBAs, and the process can produce key results, and recovered money, and even new profit centers.
Rehabilitating Bonepiles While there are numerous up -
sides to bonepile rehabilitation, the three most compelling to today’s OEMs and their contract manufac- turers include: Financial benefits. Bonepile reha-
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bilitation brings significant cost sav- ings and revenue recovery. Think of it as “found money.” The folks in the corner offices generally are quite pleased when this money is found. These cost savings are continuous because companies that implement the bonepile rehabilitation process will no longer accumulate failed boards, or at least warehouse fewer failed units deemed beyond hope of recovery. Nor will an OEM need to initiate costly one-off production runs to replace scrapped boards. Green appeal. Today, scrapping boards is the accepted method of deal- ing with bonepile boards after they have been written off. However, using Datest’s expertise, the previously failed products get recycled, rehabili- tated, and returned to productive use. Fewer resources are expended replac- ing failed units by building new units from scratch. Less e-waste means fewer landfills, with more metals and other materials returned to produc- tive use rather than to the ground. Process Feedback. Bonepile reha- bilitation generates valuable Pareto data that can feed back and be used to improve control over the manufac- turing process, thereby driving longer term, additional cost and resource savings. Done properly, les- sons can be learned for future appli- cability and long-term reduction and even elimination of systemic failures. It all adds up. You just need the
test and inspection tools — and the knowledge and experience to imple- ment a cost-effective rehabilitation program.
Process Development The concept is straightforward:
customers bring data, documentation and previously written-off test fail- ures. Datest then uses its test engi- neering resources and decades of trou- bleshooting knowledge and multiple ATE test platforms and inspection systems to bring the boards “back to life.” The company makes full use of its suite of integrated testing and inspection resources to troubleshoot, rework and restore assemblies to operational status that previously failed a customer’s functional or sys- tem test. Datest will directly rework the boards or show customers where to rework if they prefer to do it them- selves. The rehabilitation service is offered at a fraction of the original manufactured cost and is suitable for reverse logistics, warranty repair and returns management programs. Datest mobilizes the same hard-
ware and software resources utilized in production board testing to aid in troubleshooting, fault diagnosis, repair and recovery. Testing using the flying probe system, Boundary Scan/JTAG testing and X-ray inspec- tion are all highly effective, and fre- quently used for this task. In extremely high-volume applications, in-circuit testing (ICT) also may be used. The objective is to arrive at an efficient test solution that is both cost-effective and delivers significant value with a high recovery rate at zero-risk to customers. Datest’s rehabilitation team
plays a role in the process that is as important as the hardware and soft- ware resources that are used. Each member brings decades of analysis, troubleshooting and debug experi-
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