EDACafe Industry Predictions for 2022 – Yamaha

Yamaha Intelligent Machinery 2022 Market Forecast

2021 saw a significant increase in demand for assembly equipment, placing significant stress on the supply chain, especially in sea freight to the west coast and on available aircraft for urgent deliveries.  Standard sea freight custom clearance has now increased from a few days to several weeks.  Available space on ships has also decreased dramatically.

We expect this trend to continue for at least the first half of 2022.

For larger suppliers such as Yamaha, we enjoy preferred shipping status due to our entire importation strategy; but we are not immune to such delays.

Many suppliers are now building to a forecast with standard configurations.  We expect that we will need to do more customization of equipment in the field during installs to eliminate or reduce the variation in models and allow for a much more streamlined manufacturing process and inventory availability.

With this in mind, it is now more critical then ever to provide equipment that is modular as well as upgradable at the customer site in order to manage emerging dramatic swings in production requirements.

Still, the threat of Covid-related shutdowns and the scarcity of electronic components has pushed the industry to the brink of what is available.  We continue to monitor the situation and adapt on an almost daily basis to ensure a minimal impact on our customers.

The move towards minimization of components and circuit board real estate has created some great opportunities for Automated Optical Inspection. With this new capability to look at a device at a low angle with side view cameras, it is now possible to see and inspect components previously hidden by connectors, heat sinks, and other obstructions.

Our previous acquisition of Hitachi High Tech Machinery allowed us to integrate the best features of all our placement machine lines.  Most recently, it has resulted in the release of the “YRM20”, a complete new dual beam, rotary head machine that is flexible enough to match high throughput requirements with higher changeover speeds.

Lastly, as we move to integrate Factory 4.0 into North American factories, we have spent a lot of effort developing a full “Dashboard” Factory Information System that allows engineers and plant managers to intelligently forecast production based on real Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), rather than generic assumptions of productivity.

About Author:

George Babka has been in the Surface Mount field for 29 years, first as a Process Engineer at Delphi Electronics, and then as an Application Engineer for MPM Corporation. Moving to Sales in 1999, he has stayed closely involved in the design and development of SMT Equipment throughout the last 23 years.

George is the Author of Several Papers, including “A No-Clean Solder Paste Evaluation for Fine Pitch Automotive Electronics Applications,” published in the 1995 SMI Proceedings of the Technical Program; “A New Angle on Printing,” published in February 2009 in Global SMT & Packaging; and “Minimizing Solder Paste Printing Variation”, Published in Circuits Assembly in November 2009.

George is the Sales General Manager for Yamaha SMT Equipment Division for the Americas, a position he has held for the past 10 years.

Category: Predictions

This entry was posted on Friday, January 28th, 2022 at 5:21 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.