Optimizing Quality in Electronics Assembly: a Heretical Approach. James Allen Smith and Frank B. Whitehall. McGraw Hill, 1996. Number of pages: 507. Price £24.99
✍ Scribed by P. D. T. O'Connor
- Book ID
- 101293036
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 15 KB
- Volume
- 14
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0748-8017
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The authors claim that the approach that they present is heretical. Therefore they risk being burned, or, as is more likely in this more tolerant age, ignored. Both authors are very experiences in electronics manufacture and test, and in quality management, so their heresy should be worth studying, since much of the accepted dogma of modern quality does engender scepticism from many of the practical people who are involved in its application.
Unfortunately, the authors attack just about every idea that has been developed and taught for the management of quality. 'Demingism' is dismissed as being 'in danger of obsolesence'. Taguchi is referred to as a statistician, and condemned, as is the whole idea of statistical experiments in engineering. People in manufacturing operations are described as being far too incompetent to be trusted to generate process improvements: only managers working in committees can do that. Quality circles 'never worked well'. Japan's rise to industrial prominence was due primarily to guile and sharp political practice, and had nothing to do with quality and productivity. The arguments deployed by the authors are strident, shallow and often factually wrong or incompetent. For example, they state that a nonnormal distribution is one whose mean value has moved, and that the results of statistical experiments cannot indicate the difference between correlation of 'simple coincidence'. They even deny that a statistical experiment can be an experiment.
They are on firmer ground when they attack what they call 'pseudoquality', including the Motorola 'six-sigma' approach, the Baldrige award, and ISO9000. Their descriptions of these approaches are mostly accurate. However, they write that ISO9000 'originated in British defence procurement'. Their advice on how to deal with them is practical and sound: ignore the first two, and go for ISO9000 only if forced.
Despite the title of the book, it contains very little about electronics assembly. There are two chapters on soldering, but they are incomplete (no mention of surface mount technology!). Component selection is hardly mentioned, and there is nothing on design for test. The chapter on testing is also sparse (no mention on manufacturing defects analysers or automatic optical inspection), and it condemns all testing at stresses higher than specified for the circuit!
P. D. T. O'CONNOR
Stevenage, UK