Siemens 80s20 throughput !!

Hi ZJJ,

I know exactly where you're coming from on this one! We have a similar situation here with a SiPlace 80S-15, rated at 15K max per hour. In practice, we achieve about 11K. The reason is fairly straightforward. The quoted maximum placements per hour assumes that the same component is picked from the same feeder and placed to the same position on the board, over and over again. By runing a test PCB which satisfies these requirements, it is indeed possible to achieve close to the magical 15K (or 20K in your case) per hour. However, in a production situation, various parts from various feeders will be spread randomly around the PCB. And the transport of the boards in and out of the machine will eat further into the placement rate. So, depending on the layout and number of components on your PCB, and assuming you have optimised your feeder set-up, 13K per hour may not be un-typical.

Regards Scott

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Throughput is usually measured by how many components are placed over the production day. Making sure it is actually placing parts all available hours of that production day optimizes the placement machines performance. The time the machine is actually placing parts is measured as Machine Utilization. Board transfers, fiducial checks, parts outages, upstream & downstream blockages, lunch breaks, etc., all affect the machine utilization. Once machine utilization has been considered, the machines performance can then be measured and qualified against an expected placement rate. The machine design has a lot to due with what that expected rate should be. Some machine designs de-rate significantly with larger, higher mass parts and some do not. My experience with the Siemens equipment is that it is consistent in its performance over a wide range of part sizes and types.

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With the Siemens line computer it is possible to see what the maximum placements per hours should be for any given job/setup. After you optimize the job you should check that and see how you perform against that number. In many cases the placements per hour are impacted by how many different assemblies you include in the setup, especially if you have several Siemens modules in the line. Typically large setups = lower part placed per hour. Before we purchased Siemens equipment we gave them data for some of our higher running boards. They came back with a guarantee of placements per hour and it was exactly correct. In one of the latest industry magazines it was reported that the average utilization for pick and place equipment is 52%. Your numbers indicate your at 65%. Your doing something right. I work for an OEM. Periodically we contract work out to make room for new products. In all my visits to CEM I have never seen one that was above 50% utilization. Most don't even know what there utilization is or quote some bogus number that is quickly disproved by looking at the machine management data.

S. S. Snider "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." G.K. Chesterton

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