The electronics industry is undergoing significant changes in its manufacturing structure. These changes include the 'outsourcing' of production to Electronics Manufacturing Service (EMS) providers by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). The increasing use of EMS providers has placed new constraints on EMS providers establishing manufacturing standards to respond fast and accurately to OEM requests. This market is characterized by high consumer expectations and demands, globalization, and tough competition. The key to success in the market for the electronics manufacturing industry has become "manufacturing efficiency". This situation is driven by the commoditization of electronic products. The issue is no longer quality and reliability―these are assumed. Maximizing manufacturing efficiency requires a change in thinking from "yield improvement" to "time to asymptotic yield". The current strategy must expand to include crosscutting technologies. Modeling and design for X (Design for Excellence or DFX), factory information systems (FIS), test, environmental consciousness and supply chain management are emerging as the more significant arenas in which competitive advantage must be achieved. High-mix, low-volume manufacturing is the most challenging manufacturing environment emerging today. The most significant reasons forcing many EMS providers to adopt the high-mix, low volume manufacturing environment includes mass customization, shrinking inventories, decreasing time-to-market, and shorter product life cycles. The evolution of high-mix, low volume manufacturing environments has evoked many challenges to the EMS providers to manufacture products with high yield. Some of the manufacturing challenges EMS providers face include product changeover, machine utilization, product setup, high component mix, varying board sizes, build-to-order and yield improvement. This paper is an effort to discuss some of the issues faced by a high-mix, low volume-manufacturing environment and approaches that could help them to compete in the business. This paper also discusses current technologies that could help to establish an effective and efficient manufacturing operations model, critical to profitably meeting the responsiveness and delivery performance challenges of a dynamic agile, high-mix, low-volume electronics manufacturing environment.
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