February, 2017
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Better Together: Yamaha, Trans-Tec and ADCO Circuits Continued from previous page
are in the ‘Hollywood’ of automotive design; and since automotive designs are becoming increasing- ly wound around electronics, the business outlook for us is great.”
Left in the Lurch When Barrett first started working at the
company in 2012, ADCO had recently been noti- fied that the pick-and-place equipment it had was no longer going to be serviced by the supplier. “This literally threw us ‘into the ditch,’ but by chance, this also happened just prior to the 2012 IPC APEX show in San Diego,” says Barrett. “Our strategy was to visit the show and see who the players in pick-and-place equipment were, gather information, and then return and formulate a plan to evaluate the equipment and find the equipment that would best serve our needs.” The company needed machines
designed for a low-volume/high-mix assembly environment. This required equipment with high flexibility, and a focus on handling high changeover rates and ease of programming. At the time, ADCO was running two shifts and averaging anywhere from 10 to 15 changeovers per day. “At APEX, we were looking at all
the big players, but we didn’t find any platforms matching our require- ments,” Barrett says. “We were looking at a modular approach for the machine design, but found the offerings were not fast on changeover. We were look- ing for the flexibility of two smaller machines versus one larger one. A leading issue was feeder capacity. A modular approach would give us ca- pacity and flexibility; on a single large machine, it provides speed, but would force me to buy an additional machine to meet feeder requirements.” The ADCO engineers learned
about Yamaha pick-and-place technol- ogy at the show. By chance, they hap- pened to be socializing at a stand right in front of the Yamaha booth, so they decided to step in and had a demo on the machines. After an hour, Yamaha was a contender and the pricing was agreeable. It became clear that the equipment was advanced and that it would meet their needs. They narrowed their search
down to two vendors, including Yama- ha. Both machines could meet the flexibility requirements. However, in the end, Yamaha offered everything that they needed and had the edge. “We want to grow our business, and like many things in life, it’s all about first impressions,” Barrett adds. “We take great care in keeping
our facility spotless. At the end of the day, the decision came down to one question: If I were a customer walk- ing into our facility and both ma- chines, Yamaha’s and the competi- tion, were side-by-side, which one would impress me the most? The an- swer was Yamaha. The detailed con- struction, e.g., the covers over the leadscrews, and other obvious exam- ples that showed the meticulous work that went into building this machine, contributed to what we realized would be an overall ‘wow’ factor that we wanted customers to see.” In the beginning, ADCO’s engi-
neers had more than 1,000 PCBs to program, and their biggest challenge was the creation of a comprehensive parts library. They purchased ma- chines for two lines and added a stand- alone machine whose sole purpose was to create the library in parallel to pro- duction. The Trans-Tec engineers wired up the machine to do this, and it worked superbly. One person working
on the machine was able to keep up with as many as 10 changeovers per day. Four years later, the Yama-
Page 21
ha machines have, without exception, exceeded their expectations in efficiency and performance.
Improved Performance “We were running two shifts on our previous
A production line at ADCO Circuits’ facility in Rochester Hills, Michigan.
equipment to build our products,” Barrett says. “The immediate impact that the Yamaha equip- ment had was that we went from two shifts to one shift over a period of only a few months. The equip- ment ran so much better, more efficiently and changeovers occurred very quickly. The machines presented a wide range of options that allowed us to trim down our run rates. We could accommodate 10-15 changeovers in half the time, thus eliminat- ing the need for an additional shift.” The ADCO engineers did not realize the im- pact and benefit of many of the tools that the
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