Kanban system reduces lead-times for complex PCBAs

BACKGROUND

This international company is a major American corporation recognized as a leader in its field within the instrumentation market.

- off-the-shelf service for a range of fully tested pcbs: following its acquisition of a UK based business in 2000, the customer contracted Paragon to provide an off-the-shelf service for a range of fully tested pcbs, shipped direct to the customer’s integration centre in the USA.

During this period Paragon dramatically improved a number of key service parameters and as one of only three suppliers is outperforming some major global competition.

SOLUTION

In order to fully satisfy the customer’s requirements, Paragon successfully migrated the assembly from the customer’s previous contract assembly supplier.

- improved assembly quality: using an accredited supply partner within its EMM Partners Programme, Paragon provided the customer with a greatly improved product quality.

- introducing a Kanban system: Paragon introduced and now operates a Kanban system where each delivery contains a Kanban ticket, which can be used to trigger the release of the next order, producing a massive reduction in lead-times from around 9 weeks to 1 week (including transit time to the USA!).

- dedicated test fixtures: in order to improve quality levels even further, a number of ATE/ICT test fixtures have been designed and implemented in conjunction with Paragon Test Solutions Limited.

Quote from the company’s Manufacturing Manager

When I moved to this job I was surprised to see that a company the size of Paragon was managing the manufacturing of this range for us. Four years on I now fully understand why. For our higher volume and simpler products we have manufacturing partners in low cost regions, but given the complexity of what Paragon does for us and the service we get, they deserve to be the exception.