Having spent several years at the E F

Johnson Company I was fortunate to be at

the front lines of the inception of the

surface mount technology.  We were the first company

in the Midwest to take delivery on a Fuji FCP-II chip-

shooter, prior to that the  SMT machine was a Panasert

with mechanical center fingers and only capable of

placing 3216 chips.  The first Fuji chip-shooters had two

vision cameras setting the standard

for PCB assembly.  As the end-user

we became a beta test site for the

Fuji Machine Co., which, helped

enhanced our communications and

understanding of the processes

involved.  For me this was and

excellent approach to understanding complete quality

control of an assembly line with a mind set of pushing

the limitations of your equipment to achieve

continuous improvement.    E F Johnson was located in

Waseca, Minnesota.  When I came on board they

employed 1,200 people, the employee’s had a great

sense of pride in the quality of the two-way radios they

manufactured.  That pride even reached many of the

families in the community.  Waseca was a model city

for the high tech operation of E F Johnson. The

workforce was motivated and very skilled.  I could

always count on the operators to know when the

process was within the limits.    A little known fact, the

radio frequency technology that led to the

development of the cell phone originated from the Air

Phone that E F Johnson Co. designed and built, before

being acquired by Western Union.  After the passing of

Edgar F. Johnson in 1991 the company was sold to

Diversified Energies Inc., which, later was sold to

Transcript International and the liquidation of assets

continued till 2004 when it was renamed EFJ Inc.

trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker EFJI.  Today EFJI

headquarters and sales with limited engineering are

located in Irvine, Texas.  As conscientious as Edgar was

about his workforce I’m certain he wouldn’t have

approved of letting manufacturing leave the wonderful

small town of Waseca, Minnesota.   

Fuji’s come to Microtron… In 1994 I was hired by Microtron

to bolster SMT production, the

status of the Tier 1 automotive

supplier would be in jeopardy if quality and volume didn’t

improve.  My first responsibility was to find a chip-shooter

that could achieve excellent quality and high speed

assembly.  Off to San Jose I went, the PCB assembly mecca

of America.  It was there where I evaluated and ran

acceptance testing to find a Fuji on a limited budget.  The

first Fuji was a successful install of a FCP-III that delivered

exactly what was needed for the Tier 1 qualification.  Soon

after that we took delivery on a new FCP-643 that produced

thousands of instrument cluster boards for the Ford

Explorer.  Through my past  experience with Fuji’s vision

files I was able manipulate the FCP-643 into placing 52pin

quad flatpacks thus avoiding the need for an additional

placement machine.      After securing another contract with

GM,  building a Cadillac steering wheel switch board,  we

set up a third line that consisted

of an FCP-III and an FIP-II, which,

was our flexible line that could

assemble any mixed technology

board we needed, this was all

networked to our FujiCam

software for central control and

up time reporting.  It was truly a world class production

floor.    During my five year stay at Microtron the

production floor experienced explosive growth, starting

with four technicians, we then had a new facility built where

I was promoted to Maintenance Supervisor.  Our

department grew to 14 technicians.   The experience I got

supervising during that exponential growth was excellent,

each technician had their skill set that complemented the

maintenance department giving us the reputation as an

exceptional team.  Two years later I was then rewarded with

a Process Engineering position where I was given the

responsibility to implement Microtron’s largest Ford

contract to date. After that successful launch I had the

opportunity to present PFEMA’s and control charts to Ford’s

Quality Engineers.   We became a strong Tier 1 automotive

supplier,  which,  attracted Lear Corporation and they soon

made the acquisition that moved all of our assembly lines

to Florida in the Spring of 2000.

  In the Spring of 2000 I joined the

Advanced Manufacturing

Engineering (AME) team at Guidant

Corporation, which, in 2007 was

acquired by Boston Scientific Corp.  The AME department

was a highly skilled group of technicians and engineers

responsible for the development and launch of all new

products and processes.  I felt a real privilege                          

to be working with such people.    After finishing the

release of the excising process for the new flex circuits, I

was then assigned to laser weld development.  Typically

the new process development consisted of performing a

variety of Design of Experiments (DOE) to establish process

parameters.  During DOE testing we tested the builds with

methods such as cross-sectional analysis, pull,

compression,  tensile, shear and fatigue  testing.  When

successful results were achieved we moved on to

prototype runs and writing validation protocols to

determine the peer reviewed validation test requirements. 

Once the validation test was

completed and signed off,  a pilot

run was scheduled with a large

sample of units to provide real time

data based on extensive testing

done during and after the pilot run. 

Because our full production was

targeted for Clonmel, Ireland;

Clonmel also did concurrent pilot

runs on an identical set of equipment using the process

parameters we established in Arden Hills, Minnesota.     

Although, this road-map to launch wasn’t new to me I was

impressed with how well the different departments such as

AME, Design Engineering, Quality and Production adhered

to the published timeline.  AME was the communication

hub between departments with our goal being 9 months to

new product launch.  Having become quite proficient at

laser welding, I spent considerable time working with the 

Design Engineers regarding material changes and new

innovations regarding the shear strength of the device

headers.  Throughout the years the industry had always

used anchor posts with snap-on headers and medical

adhesive. Our top attach process of using over-molded

headers that had titanium tabs molded within the

tecothane headers proved to be a significant break

through.  I developed a laser weld program that would spot

weld the tabs while the device was orientated at a 45o

angle to the laser beam.  The process improvement

virtually eliminated the chance of header failure as our

shear strength went from 3.0 lbs to 22.0 lbs.     The

acquisition of Guidant Corp. by Boston Scientific has not

turned out ideal for Arden Hills employee’s.  Although,

Boston Scientific needed to prevent Johnson & Johnson

from acquiring Guidant,  Boston Scientific has never

recovered from the huge debt that the company incurred

during the merger.  Shortly after the deal was completed

Boston Scientific began selling off assets and relocated

much of the AME department to Clonmel. 

Celestica is a world wide manufacturing services

corporation that specializes in PCB

assembly, their Arden Hills,

Minnesota location was considered

their low volume, high mix plant before they consolidated

the operations and moved the contracts back to Toronto,

Ontario in the Fall of 2008.  As a Process Engineer I was

responsible for the oversight of Honeywell’s Aerospace

products.  The quality of the assemblies were considered

first class; gold plated substrates, high percentage

tolerance components and anti-vibration mechanical

stiffeners.     Recognizing the manual rivet operation was

the cause of most failures I immediately fitted the arbor

presses with a torque limiter, then began designing a three

axis CNC configuration that would locate the PCB mounting

holes then cycle the riveter ram to a pre-determined Z

height, preventing the possibility of damaging the very

expensive final assembly.   Although my manager was

pleased,  the notice of a plant shutdown prevented

completion of the CNC riveter.  However the AutoCAD

drawings were sent to Toronto for implementation.

The Bergquist Company is a

supplier of thermal materials and

thermal substrates such as keypad

membrane switches,  I was hired to create AutoCAD

drawings for the contract services division that offered

engineering support for a variety of electronic products. 

In 2009 the division was sold to Electri-Cord Mfg. Co. and

relocated to Guadalajara, Mexico.

= Associate Degree in Electronic Technology (Computer  

Systems Major) - Northwestern Electronics IInstitute.

=Cincinnati, Inc. 6 Axis Autoform Press Brake

Maintenance.

= FujiCam training at Fuji America Corp.

= Fuji CP-643 maintenance training at Fuji America Corp.

= Philips Topaz maintenance training at Philips Electronic

Technology Products.

=Solidworks Essentials 2009 training.

= JIT Implementation Design training.

= Labview FPGA Application and Development training.

= Level II Laser Safety training.

= 5 ME training.

= Statistical Process Control training.

= GD&T training.

= PLC Ladder Logic training.

= Electrical Codes NFPA 70 training. Registered with the

State of Minnesota as a Licensed / Unlicensed electrician.

=ELN Electronic Lab Notebook training.

= Quality Circles training.