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Join me today: IPC Webinar “The Importance of a Good PCB Design Package”

In conjunction with the IPC, join me on this live Webinar Wednesday, March 13th, 2024. Sign up using this registration link to the webinar https://www.ipc.org/event/importance-good-pcb-design-package

 

 

 

 

 

 

Topics Include:

  1. Customer Service Representatives Are Not Engineers
  2. Netlist does not match the manufacturing data
  3. Impedance stackups do not meet impedance requirements
  4. Not using the appropriate material set
  5. Customized CAM adjustments
  6. Designer not understanding fabricator capabilities
  7. Inheriting a design from a competitor
  8. Overdesigning a PCB
  9. Unmanufacturable designs
  10. Lack of designer/fabricator engagement

 

Contact me at:

Steve@tracQMS.com

920-841-3478

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Talking Ultra HDI with John Johnson Pt. 2

Continuing with the second in my 3-part interview with ASC’s John Johnson, formerly with Averatek, on the patented A-SAP process that allows PCB manufacturers to produce sub 25-micron (1 mil) pcb trace and space designs with perfectly straight side walls.

Click here to read the entire article: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1512857-design007-dec2023/45?

Contact me for all your quality needs or to schedule your own company marketing interview.

920-941-3478

Steve@tracQMS.com

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ASC Receives ISO 13485 Certification

Press Release

March 17, 2023

West Chicago, IL

I am pleased to announce that client American Standard Circuits has achieved certification to ISO 13485 for the medical device industry. This latest certification adds to ASC’s AS9100 Aerospace, ISO 9001 Commercial, IATF 16949 Automotive and MIL-PRF-31032 Military certification

President and CEO, Anaya Vardya commented, “This certification represents a great deal of work and dedication from all our team members, along with Steve Williams of TRAC. They all put together a tremendous effort to reach this goal. It is my understanding that there are very few printed circuit board companies that have earned ISO 13485:16 Medical Certification which makes us stand out as a preferred medical electronics circuit board provider. As we continued to grow our medical business exponentially, we felt that this certification would go a long way in establishing our leadership in this marketplace. Now that we have made the investment in time and people to accomplish this certification we look forward to meeting and working with even more medical electronics companies.”

 

For more information about American Standard Circuits’ services or to ask one of their technology experts a question go to http://www.asc-i.com

Contact me to start your ISO 13485 Medical certification.

Steve@tracQMS.com

920-841-3478

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HT Global Circuits receives ISO 9001: 2015 Certification

PRESS RELEASE

The Right Approach Consulting

January 25, 2021

St Petersburg, FL

HT Global Circuits receives ISO 9001: 2015 Certification

I am extremely proud to announce that client HT Global Circuits – St. Petersburg, has received certification to ISO 9001: 2015 from certifying body SAI Global. The company had a solid quality foundation going in from many years of numerous quality certifications and prior revisions of the ISO standard, and realized significant process improvement and simplification of the QMS. Director of Quality, Bob Castro, was the force driving this initiative and indicated this was a milestone for the FL facility and plans to add more certifications in the near future. The management team and workforce were heavily involved in the process and were a key component of the success of the project. A heartfelt thanks & congrats to all!

About HT Global Circuits

HT Global Circuits is a worldwide leader in the design, manufacturing, sourcing and supply of printed circuit boards (PCBs), liquid crystal displays (LCDs), adjacent electronic products and support services to the electronics design and manufacturing industries.  They provide small and large corporations for printed circuit boards (PCBs), including government agencies, manufacturing solutions that meet the ever-changing global technology shifts through domestic and offshore manufacturing facilities including industry leading rapid prototyping.

As one of the largest privately owned printed circuit board PCB manufacturing companies in the United States, HT Global Circuits is headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, with other locations in Milwaukee Wisconsin, China, Jordan and Germany. HT Global Circuits has been in business for over 25 years and has established itself as not only a supplier of large-volume printed circuit boards (PCBs), but also as a supplier of globally competitive, high tolerance, high quality, small to medium volume production quantities as well.

For more information go https://www.htglobalcircuits.com

 

Please reach out and contact me for all of your QMS needs.

Steve@tracQMS.com

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Ventec California Receives ISO 9001: 2015 Certification

I am pleased to share the below press release from client Ventec on their recent ISO certification:

We are proud to announce that we have passed the ISO 9001:2015 audit for our Quality Management System at our US-facility in Fullerton (California), following an audit by certifying body Intertek. This follows the certification of Ventec’s Chicago facility earlier this year.

ISO 9001:2015 sets out the criteria for a quality management system and is based on a number of quality management principles including a strong customer focus, the motivation and implication of top management, the process approach and continual improvement. The hard work put in by Anthony Guerra, Julie Vance and the entire Ventec Fullerton staff, supported by Steve Williams from TRAC has ensured achieving a perfect audit with official certification being issued this month.

“Further to successfully certifying our Chicago facility in April of this year, I am very proud that our Fullerton facility now has also successfully passed the ISO 9001:2015 audit without any instances of non-conformity,” said Jack Pattie, President Ventec (USA). “It recognizes the hard work of the entire Ventec team and confirms the success of our quality strategy for the benefit of all our customers.”

“Ventec’s global emphasis on implementing and maintaining a seamless QMS that adds value to the business is second to none. Jack and the entire team in Fullerton embraced the process and were highly engaged in the development and implementation. The results speak for themselves; a perfect audit for Fullerton to match Chicago’s results earlier this year. It is a pleasure working with an organization that gets it,” added Steve Williams, President of TRAC.

“Ventec maintains robust quality management systems in all its facilities around the world including AS9100 Rev D and IATF 16949:2016, ensuring that all our customers receive reliable, consistent, good quality products and services from us through our fully controlled global supply chain,” said Mark Goodwin, COO Europe & Americas.

Contact me to start your QMS certification journey!

Steve@tracQMS.com

920-841-3478

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Your QMS can help you understand your customers! (pt 1)

Understanding your customers may seem like a no-brainer, but talking with company leaders across various industries the past seven years demonstrate just how difficult this can be in practice. One of the newest requirements to both ISO 2015 & AS9100 2016 is expanding the whole concept of who is a customer. The traditional definition of a customer is organizations that pay us for our product. The new requirement is to define the “Interested Parties” to the business, and to identify what their needs are.

Interested Parties are defined as any party that has an interest in how your company performs. This includes traditional customers, but also adds parties such as owners/stakeholders, employees, suppliers, banks, and the community. Only parties that have an interest in how your company performs and impact the QMS need be examined, although this should be a very short list. Because, as I preach to my clients, a “B” can be functionally swapped out for the “Q” in QMS as it is actually a Business Management System for the entirety of the organization.

How can this help? Excellent question, because any requirement comes with the expectation that something must be done. A simple analysis at the next management review meeting will suffice, using a tool such as my attached Interested Parties Worksheet. Refreshing this activity then becomes an annual exercise.

Stand by for Part 2, and contact me to help with your Interested Parties analysis

920-841-3478

Steve@tracQMS.com

www.tracQMS.com

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American Standard Circuits Recertified to AS9100D & ISO 9001: 2015

PRESS RELEASE

The Right Approach Consulting

September 19, 2019

West Chicago, IL

Congratulations to client American Standard Circuits, who have received their 3-year recertification to AS9100D & ISO 9001: 2015 from certifying body Intertek. The company continues to realize performance improvements as the QMS matures and evolves to support the rapidly growing company.

CEO Anaya Vardya commented:

“It is critical to maintain our quality certifications for a couple of reasons. First, the customers we serve are some of the most demanding in the business, and our certifications  are mandatory to retain their business. Second, with the complexity of the advanced technology we produce daily, we just can’t afford mistakes and our QMS gives us the structure and discipline to minimize them.”

About American Standard Circuits

American Standard Circuits (ASC) prides itself on being a total solutions provider, manufacturing quality rigid, metal-backed, RF/Microwave, flex, and rigid-flex PCBs for the medical, automotive, industrial, defense, and aerospace markets in volumes from test and prototypes to large production orders. ASC has the expertise to provide a wide variety of technologies in a time-critical environment.  Their qualifications include AS9100 Rev D, ISO 9001:2015, MIL-PRF 31032, MIL-PRF-55110, MIL-PRF-50884 certification and ITAR registration. American Standard also holds many key patents for metal bonding processes. For more information about American Standard Circuits services or to ask one of their technology experts a question, click here.

To download American Standard Circuits eBook, “The Printed Circuit Board Designer’s Guide to Flex and Rigid-Flex Fundamentals” visit their download site here.

To download American Standard Circuits eBook “The Printed Circuit Designer’s Guide to Fundamentals of RF/Microwave PCBs” visit their download site here.

 

 

 

 

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SMT Engineering achieves ISO 9001: 2015 Certification with a perfect audit!

PRESS RELEASE

The Right Approach Consulting

September 5, 2019

Appleton, WI

SMT Engineering achieves ISO 9001: 2015 Certification with a perfect audit!

I am proud to announce that client SMT Engineeringhas received certification to ISO 9001: 2015 from certifying body Verisys. The company made the decision to differentiate themselves from other design services by pursuing ISO certification, and their hard work was rewarded with a perfect audit. This was a particularly noteworthy accomplishment as the QMS was developed from scratch and had no existing certification as a baseline. Greg Goltz (Director of Engineering), Steve Spelbring (Sr. Hardware Engineer and Rachel Maslanka (Engineering Project Specialist) embraced the challenge and engaged the entire organization in the effort.

Director of Engineering Greg Goltz stated:

“On behalf of SMT Engineering, I want to thank you for your knowledgeable insight, guidance, and patience during our recent ISO journey.  I am happy to report the hard work paid off as we have obtained our ISO-9001, 2015 certification last week and our audit could not have gone smoother.  I know we spent a significant amount of time working on our process documents and your expertise was well worth the investment. Our first audit had no major or minor findings, but we did receive a number of very positive observations. 

We started this endeavor trying to develop the process documents on our own, but quickly determined we could not accomplish this without external help and you came to us as a highly recommended industry resource.  Thank you again!  I will definitely use The Right Approach Consulting for future work and will gladly recommend your services to anyone that wants to obtain ISO Certification.”

About SMT Engineering

SMT Engineering is a leader in the Electronic Design Engineering Services industry by providing leading edge product design and development solutions. Electronic Design Engineering Services are performed as an extension of customer capabilities and include both a la carte services and full turnkey engineering solutions. Services include design of hardware, firmware, software, PCB layouts, product verification, prototypes, and production test solutions.  Their Engineering Services guarantees the customer retains all intellectual property (IP) and design ownership including electronic documentation and design files.

For more information, they can be reached through their website http://www.teamsmt.com/solutions/#engineering

 

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QMS or BMS? Well…

Quality Management System

The first thing we need to get straight is that a Quality Management System (QMS) is actually a Business Management System (BMS). Your Quality Management System will encompass every business process from quoting through shipping (and after sale service), so the QMS is not a “quality thing”, it is an “everyone thing”.  I occasionally run into companies that still have the attitude of “we are only doing this to satisfy ISO, there is not much value to the company.”

This is wrong-headed thinking on so many levels.The true benefits of an ISO system are that it should be used to run the business. The process metrics established for ISO should be discussed at every production and managers meeting. Internal audits should be used to improve every process on an ongoing basis. Customer feedback should drive organizational improvement, and so on. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to find a single requirement of ISO that just doesn’t make good business sense.

The ISO powers that be have emphasized this point with the 2015 revision by requiring top management to be fully engaged in the entire system and not just their own sandbox. This is a good thing.

Contact TRAC

Give me a call to help turn your QMS into a BMS!

920-841-3478

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Guerrilla Tactics to Pass any QMS Audit – Tactic 10 Tips To Reverse a Finding

Williams’ Law 10

The more “wins” you can bank with an auditor/customer, the greater the chance they will write-off a negative observation as an “isolated anomaly”.

Conversely…

The more “findings” an auditor/customer identifies, the deeper they will dig in all subsequent areas.

The key to reversing an auditor’s QMS audit finding is on-the-spot corrective action. Responsive, ultra-prompt action is required as well as the aforementioned political savvy of the Management Representative in administering the techniques discussed below.

Guerrilla Tactic 10: Techniques to Reverse a QMS Audit Finding

Page Swap

A Page Swap is a technique that can be employed to correct minor mistakes or omissions in a procedure. This technique is perfectly legal as long as there is a Page Swap clause in the Document Control procedure outlining the rational and rules for its use.
If an error and/or omission is identified by an auditor, utilizing the Page Swap technique to immediately correct the error and present the auditor with a corrected procedure before he/she finishes the audit will generally result in a non-finding.

Situations that allow a Page Swap:

  • Swapping a single page in a QMS procedure
  • Does not require re-approval of the entire procedure
  • Page content integrity remains intact
  • Page numbering does not change
  • Typos
  • Minor wording changes
  • Missing word/phrase
  • Where obvious intent was implied

Instant Procedure Revision

On-the-spot procedure revisions are the reason that key employees and procedure signatories must be present and available for all major audits and customer visits. The ability to rapidly change, approve and distribute a procedure revision in reaction to an auditor’s finding will be the difference between a formal finding and a clean audit.

If you missed any of the prior Guerrilla Tactics you can find them all at https://tracqms.com/blog/.

Contact TRAC

Contract me to start our Guerrilla Training before your next audit.

Steve: 920-841-3478

Steve@tracQMS.com

 

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