Thanks for all the responses. I do agree with what was said, and can certainly see reasons not to try. I'll write a little more about what we do.
We are a defense contractor, and as I mentioned very high mix, low volume. We only have 1 SMT line. A vast majority of our assemblies can be partially processed by pick and place, then finished by hand placement. This is mostly because we don't get all of our parts on reels. We do have a lot of mix (TH and SMT) boards, but are mostly SMT only.
We use a Juki KE2020, which can accommodate 2 trolleys at a time, along with trays fed by the MTC. We use CircuitCAM, and I just took the training class, so I'm getting better at it (and yes, it does provide a feeder loading sheet). The statement about optimizing setup for several assemblies is good. I'll have to look into that.
We have 4 trolleys, so we have the ability to work on c/o while the machine is running; however, our operators are not very motivated - not to mention our supply chain kills us with ordering parts that are not reeled or is late getting us parts, etc...another subject...sorry - I'm just the engineer, not a manager, so that frustrates me.
I know we can analyze our "job ready" based on MRP 3 months out, so by knowing what's coming, we should be able to better organize how we process our assemblies (ie, batch those that have the most common parts b/t them). We have hundreds of different assemblies, so it will take some work organizing that - plus we seem to add more contracts every time I turn around.
I'm not familiar with our Juki (much anyway), but plan on attending the class in August. Hopefully after that I'll be able to speak Juki a little better.
I'll get back to the reeling question I had. It seems like (from your posts) the 2 main arguments against trying this is potential for our re-reeling vendor to make a mistake (wrong sequence) and the potential for the Juki to lose/drop a part. Were there other issues?
Just for argument's sake, how would you mitigate those 2 problems if you were trying to implement this? If Juki drops a part, what are the reasons it would do that? Poor part position in the reel? Poor seal by the nozzle? Part out of spec? If it does drop it, can I have Juki just go on and we'll place it by hand afterwards? - not ideal situation, I'll admit. What about vendor sequencing problems? I don't have many ideas about that. Oh - we don't have AOI yet either...though, I'd like to look into it.
I agree being able to setup on external trolleys should work fine for quick changeovers. Anyway, I'm just trying to pick your brains for info, and since you all seem to have pretty good information and experience, I thought I'd keep asking questions (lots of them :).
Thanks!
Chris
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