Phil
Welcome to Board Talk. This is Jim Hall and Phil Zarrow, the Assembly Brothers, Pick and Place, from ITM Consulting.

Jim
Phil I'm looking at the responses and questions from our readers. We get an awful lot of questions about solder defects. Is that telling us something about what's going on, generally, in the industry?

Phil
Yeah I think it really does. And I got to tell you: at least these guys are asking the questions. I got to grant them that. How about all the others that aren't asking? This is something that just pulls my rickshaw. The fact that there seems to be complacency out there, "I'm okay to live with mediocrity," the idea, "Oh, a certain level of defects, that's okay. Don't fix something that's not really broken."

Well it is broken, damn it. This whole thing flies in the face of what you and Dr. Ron and I are always talking about, LEAN and continuous improvement. This is the opposite; I don't get it. I mean people are actually maintaining inventory in preparation for building scrap. This is insane. How did we evolve to this? Where did this come from?

Jim
Well perhaps people don't like to admit their mistakes, so they hide the rework people off in the back corner. We see this all the time – we deal with this very frequently in our consulting activities. People don't measure the defects; they don't keep totals, they don't keep accurate numbers: "Oh, it's hard!"

I think one of the problems is they don't want to know; they don't want to deal with DPMO, defects per million opportunities, percent first pass yield. They're taking first yield after you do touchup. All these things contribute. I think it's just hiding a problem.

Phil
Yeah, I agree. I guess you could say these people were in denial or something here.

We have something we call the consultant's dilemma. To paraphrase our Car Talk Brothers, but basically we feel like we're mechanics. One of the things we have in common with them. This is what we typically see. People have a defect problem: "Maybe if I ignore it it'll go away," like putting duct tape over the Check Engine light or turning the radio up to hide a sound.

Then they go a little further: now it's starting to get a little bit more severe, kind of swerving from side to side, hitting the curb, things like that: "Well, let's try to fix it ourselves," oh, finally getting to do something. Sometimes they succeed; a lot of the times they don't, and it gets worse. And then maybe they'll call in the consultant.

But anyway, it's that first thing, that complacency, where they're living with a certain level of defects. How do we get this way? Is this an indictment of our society and our whole culture?

Jim
It's not unique to the United States.

Phil
And a lot of people settle for, "Well, you know," and they send this stuff overseas, cheap labor, and "Yeah, you got to expect a certain lack of quality." Why? Why are you settling for mediocrity?

All right, I'll calm down now.

Jim
But please continue to send in your comments and your suggestions and even if they are solder defects, but we'll try to get back to you. Thanks a lot.

And speaking of soldering. Don't solder like my brother.

Phil
And don't solder like my brother.

Jim
And keep the kids away from the flux pot.