The most compelling advantage for joining a consortium is the leverage it gives its participants. Whether providing critical mass to influence solutions and best practices, or sharing costs to provide a “bigger bang for the buck,” there is strength in numbers.
Project demonstrates collaborative advantage
An example of this can been seen in iNEMI's ongoing BiSn-Based Low-Temperature Soldering Process and Reliability Project. This project is assessing the surface mount processability and reliability of the solder joints formed when enhanced BiSn-based solder pastes are used for assembling electronic components on printed circuit boards.
The team is evaluating various solder paste options on test vehicles designed with 12 different components (from capacitors, BGAs and QFN/QPPs to connectors), and two board surface finishes with optimized surface mount processes. The project scope includes:
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Design of two test vehicles
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Process development for 12 low-temperature solder pastes plus SAC305 baseline
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Rework feasibility evaluation
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Assembly data collection and analysis to understand each paste's printing transfer efficiency, solder joint cross-section quality, the mechanical shock and SIR (surface insulation resistance) performance
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Thermal cycling tests on the six best-performing pastes and testing of their vibration reliability, etc.
Obviously, the scope of work is complex and comprehensive, and would be not only time-consuming but costly for a single company to execute. However, with the costs and efforts spread among 22 participating members and industry contributors, the work becomes feasible.
Significant cost savings achieved
The team estimates that the project will require approximately 9,000 man-hours. At an industry-average burdened cost of $100 (US) per hour, that is $900,000 (US) in man-hours alone. They also estimate that material and service costs (for an individual company) would be more than $365,000 USD, bringing the total project cost to $1.265 million (US).
The total actual monetary cost to date for this project is $2,644 for external SIR test services. Materials have been contributed by project participants and industry contributors; and development, production, test and analysis work has been shared among all participants, making the burden on any one company much more manageable. It also enables companies to examine more options in parallel and reduce the time it ultimately takes to enable new technologies in high-volume production.
Through collaborating with other companies within the electronics manufacturing supply chain, these project participants have been able to achieve tremendous ROI while also generating valuable information for future business development.
Estimating your ROI
Joining a consortium like iNEMI to collaborate on industry problems allows your organization to share resources and create more value in the end product. Let us show you how iNEMI can help your organization. We have developed a calculator to determine your estimated ROI on iNEMI membership and participation. Click on the button below to download the calculator and input your organization's custom data to produce a personalized ROI.
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