For senior management, processes are a profit model; for middle management, processes represent a management mindset and approach; for operational staff, processes are a set of operational specifications and manuals. Therefore, processes are extremely important for individuals at different levels within a company.
Incident Background: One day, an engineer from a large company suddenly called and said: “We are having issues programming an MCU chip, with a probability of programming failure. Moreover, the chips that are successfully programmed cannot operate. We have a large batch of chips waiting to be programmed. Please help us resolve this quickly, or it will affect production of our products.”
Solution Step 1: Adhering to the principle of customer first, we first needed to test the chips on our side. After selecting the appropriate chips and adapters, we took them to the programmer for testing. We started by randomly filling in data and clicking on the mass production operation (including erasing, programming, and verification). The process is shown in the image below.
We tested hundreds of times without encountering any programming anomalies. We could only report our testing results back to the customer and asked them to send their programming files for testing, which yielded the same results with no issues.
After communicating with various personnel from the customer, we were unable to resolve the issue, and it seemed our relationship with the customer was on the brink of collapse, “the friendship boat capsizes at any moment.”
Solution Step 2: Since phone and email couldn’t solve the problem, we had to go on-site to resolve the issue. We arrived at the customer’s location with a sense of apprehension.
Their programming engineer demonstrated their programming process, and after programming a few chips, no issues were found. Through communication with their engineers, we discovered they had a configuration file that needed to be programmed.
By pulling up the customer’s programming log file, we found that there was a “read” operation during their programming process, followed immediately by mass production. The process is shown in the image below.
Some operations were performed step-by-step, without conducting the “mass production” or “combination” operations, which deviated from the normal programming process. After desoldering the chips that the customer said could not operate, we found that some of the data was empty, and some of the configuration data was incorrect. The majority of programming failures were due to improper placement of the chips or poor contact with the pins. Thus, we identified the general issue, which was related to the customer’s operational process. Following the standard programming process as shown in the image below, we programmed hundreds of chips, and all passed the board tests.
Solution Step 3: After successfully testing a small batch at the customer’s site, it was essential to follow the standard operational procedures for chip programming. Subsequent operations could only utilize mass production operations, while read and other single-step operations were prohibited.
Solution Step 4: Establish a project where all processes and files are configured to prevent workers from clicking anything other than mass production or exit, thereby eliminating operational errors.
Conclusion
Processes play a vital role in enterprise production, and a clear and defined process is the fundamental starting point for problem-solving.
Contact Information
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