Integrated product and process design through feedback of manufacturing experience

Computer Integrated Manufacturing tools are used extensively in the electronics industry, yet in this industry manufacturing experience impacts design rules which lie outside the CIM system. Typically, changes or additions to design rules, when they result from manufacturing experience, are determined in an ad hoc way by committee. In this paper we propose a way to capture quantitative relationships between product defects during manufacturing and the product and process design parameters. We describe the integration of logistic regression models with a relational database that permits new design rules to be created in a formal prescribed way, and that takes advantage of the increasing availability of complete part design and processing histories. The method and data structures are illustrated using a solder bridging problem.