Optimizing Equipment Configuration for Production Volumes

Electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers often have to evaluate equipment selection tradeoffs on more stringent standards than original equipment manufacturers due to their needs for flexible capacity across multiple clients.

In one recent example, the engineering team at SigmaTron International's Chihuahua, Mexico, facility needed to evaluate whether multiple single-spray-nozzle automated conformal coating machines would be a better choice for a high-volume project than a single machine customized with three spray nozzles.

The argument in favor of multiple single-nozzle machines was the flexibility they could provide in addressing the needs of other projects, plus the redundancy they provided should one machine have unanticipated downtime. Customizing a single machine with three nozzles cost less than three machines, took up less space on the factory floor and reduced setup and cleanup time. The potential negative to the single machine option, in addition to the lack of redundancy for unanticipated downtime, was that most other projects would require only a single nozzle, utilizing only a third of the custom machine's capacity.

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