I think the issue may be more than just the oven. I worked at a facility in Florida, where lightning strikes were common. We installed backup generators for the facility. Among the issues and costs we analyzed were: frequency of outages, boards in reflow ovens, SMT equipment down time, labor impacts of overtime to catch up for lost time, testing issues (burn-in, etc.), damage to computers, wave solder and hand assembly impacts. We found that due to the frequency of power outages, we were losing a lot more cost than just boards stuck in the reflow oven. Depending on how long the power was out for, it reset the SMT equipment, stopped burn-in testing (which then had to be restarted from the beginning), and cost lots of labor dollars from operators sitting idle, then paying for overtime to make up for the lost production time from the power outage. Then figure out if there are delivery impacts from the lost production time. It was expensive to provide facility backup generators, but it saved a lot more money in the long run.
Brian
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