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www.us- tech.com


May, 2019


Using X-Ray Component Counting to Accurately Manage Inventory


By Todd O’Neil, Vice President of Business Development, optical control A


part of the Elsysko Group and sister company of elektron sys- teme, optical control is a full-


service EMS company based in Weis- senohe, Germany. The company has 160 employees, four SMT lines and two through-hole lines. It was found- ed in 2009, and in 2011, optical con- trol formed a sales and service organ- ization for the OC-SCAN®CCX (com- ponent counter X-ray) products. The company focuses solely on


development and manufacturing of X-ray component counting machines. Recently it launched a North Ameri- can division, which is a direct result of its growth in the region. Still in the process of finalizing Optical Con- trol Americas, the company initially projected that it would take about three years to reach its current level. Even with a great product and excel- lent reps, optical control still relies on the machine to speak for itself. My role with with company was


to take a product that was somewhat of an unknown in all areas except Ger- many and a few other European coun- tries and globalize it. This began in the United States, but soon after hiring my counterpart in Asia, the growth there has increased significantly. Since the beginning of 2019, op-


tical control has added three new rep companies. These are some of the best reps in the industry. All of them


C 4:53 PM Page 1 OC-SCAN CCX X-ray component counting system.


carry only “best-in-industry” prod- ucts. As the company’s reputation grows it expects that more sales reps will be attracted to the X-ray compo- nent counter.


Accurate Inventory Management


While there are many other


competitive machines, optical control was the first to create the technology. Its sister company is an EMS provider with four SMT lines, so the


X-ray component counter can be run in live production during a three- shift per day, five-day work week. Thousands and thousands of reels go through the machine, which have al- lowed the company to develop robust algorithms, compared with other so- lutions. The machine does not re- quire a library and relies entirely on logical algorithms. It is critical to understand exact


inventory numbers. Keeping SMT lines running is the bottom line and


the driving factor for exact inventory control. The world is automating everything. Parts of the industry, such as board feeding, screen print- ing, AOI, pick-and-place, and reflow have been automated for years, but inventory management and control have fallen behind. Suddenly, howev- er, there is high demand to automate and control this process. A company may have the best line techs and equipment in the industry, but if it does not have components, it is meaningless. Automating inventory management solves this issue. Also, the popularity of inventory


storage units along with component counters is at an all time high. Previ- ously, one would purchase compo- nents, manually enter the quantity into the ERP system and then put them away. When that component was needed, it would be removed from inventory, set up on feeders, sent to production, and then returned to in- ventory. The problem was that there was so much handling in between each process and counting would only be involved sometimes. Often, only the so-called “impor-


tant” or “expensive” components were counted because there was not enough time to count 100 percent of them. Even though some components were being counted at factories, it


Continued on next page


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