Package Thickness Capability Improvement of Secure Microcontroller Flex-PCB-based Product through DMAIC Approach

Secure microcontroller flex-PCB-based product is used for printer ink cartridges. One of the most critical characteristic of this product is the package thickness. Too low or too high package thickness will result to an assembly issue at customer's side. During the initial production line stressing stage, it was noted that the process performance or Ppk of package thickness is 45% way below the set plant Ppk target. This extremely low Ppk value attained strongly suggests that the package thickness response is highly inconsistent and would result to a projected high defect rate based from the Yield-PPM-sigma level chart. This will impact overall assembly yield performance. Package thickness Ppk improvement is therefore necessary to improve also the overall assembly yield. DMAIC tools and methodology will be used during the discussions in this technical paper in helping improve the package thickness Ppk and consequently improve overall assembly yield.