Electronics OEM Partnership: How Koh Young's Maximizing Matric’s Yield

What do quality, efficiency, and a high passing yield rate have in common? Meticulous inspection. 

When you’re creating electronic components that go into everything from cars to mines to airplane seat controls, each component must run through stringent quality standard checks during production. 

Enter Koh Young -- a world-leading manufacturer of 3D measurement and inspection technology.  

Prior to 2006, the quality control checks at Matric were all done manually (by eye), increasing the likelihood of mistakes and failures. Since 2006, with the addition of Koh Young equipment, Matric's passing yield rate has steadily increased from around 80% to over 98%.

Passing Yield Rate: Efficient PCB Production 

The partnership between Koh Young and Matric began in 2006 when Matric installed its first offline automated optical inspection (AOI) to support three Mycronic surface mount technology lines. Not long after, Matric added a Panasonic line to its facility in addition to a post-reflow AOI to the end of the line, and a pre-reflow AOI and Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) system to the front. Matric has since standardized three Koh Young multipoint inspection points for each line. 

“It immediately moved us to between 80 and 85% yield,” Patric Stimpert, VP of Operations at Matric, says. “Then we looked at our root causes and quickly pushed our yields to 98+% -- both final yields and first-pass yields.” 

With quality on the mind, the addition of Koh Young’s Smart Factory Solutions (aka KSMART) technology has helped Matric streamline inspection and root cause analysis. The KMSART process control system brings the pre- and post-flow AOI systems, and SPI systems together on one dashboard; accessible from anywhere to get the latest insight into the performance of each line.  

Liisa Maenpaa, Director of Quality Assurance at Matric, says, “(Matric) still has reels that come in from a supply chain manufacturer with mixed parts or polarity skewed throughout the tube or reel. The pre-reflow identifies those things before they go into the oven, and this reduces rework.

“(Matric is) in the process of building (Koh Young’s KSMART system) out, and eventually we'll have a dashboard on every line where you can see a color-coded chain of events. It'll be running green if everything is coming out of the Koh Young perfectly. It'll show red when there's something that's gone wrong or gone off the rails, or you start having defects. ... Our ultimate goal ... is a command center where we have one person operating all the SPIs and AOIs.”

Matric will continue to invest in Koh Young technology to make the manufacturing process quicker, better, and more cost-efficient for the OEM buyer.

PCB Services Done the Right Way: 

It’s no secret that Koh Young helped Matric modernize and innovate its work flow. Thanks to Koh Young, Matric is now able to offer a wide range of PCB and aftermarket services. 

Check out our services pages for more information.