THT manual assembly worker instructions

Some of our troop have poorly developed reading skills, because either English is a second language or other reasons. So, we use visual tools.

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Skill and experiance level of assemblers is critical. High skill and experiance with the type of assembly, print and BOM and hgihlighters.

Day labor would be 5 to 10 components for each assembler, already prepped with pictures or drawings showing where the parts go. Assume the assemblers can read some language. The descriptions are gibberish in English as they are abbreveations, parts locations and parts numbers. So everything is a symbol that has to be learned. I had the same problems with non-English speakers as natives.

Something in between would be a a machine from Contact Systems or equilivent that presents only the part to be assembled and a light where it goes. Some cut and clinch the part.

This all depends on how expensive is the labor and how costly is the error?

Some one has to review the document package for hidden requirements and non standard practice. This operation sounds like a CM doing obsolete PCA's. Although IPC 610 is a current workmanships standard, there were many designs from the 70's, 80's ans 90's that pre date the standard or were built to a different standard completely. The problem is some of the designs will not work if built to todays specification.

It's up the the factory team to figure out the enviorment they are in and what will work.

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There are various software programs out there to aid in the creation of visual aids for manual assy. and other steps in the process. We currently use Circuitcam (Aegis). It helps us create color coded (by part number) visual aids for the whole process.

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