Seeing clear on static control
09/01/2001
Finally, an ESD control program standard that everyone can live with
by Sheila Galatowitsch
Several years ago when military and commercial electrostatic discharge (ESD) experts met to write the first comprehensive ESD standard, their goal was to provide electronics manufacturers with a "clear and visible" path to implementing a static control program. So they gave their document the designation "S20.20." And by all accounts, the resulting standard is indeed the clear vision its authors sought.
The best evidence of its success is the number of registrars lining up to receive certification training on the new standard. After the ESD Association (ESDA) announced its registrar training program last September, requests for training have come into the organization from all parts of the globe.
 |
High registrar interest indicates strong demand for certification services from electronics manufacturers. Industry acceptance of S20.20 signals an end to multiple, proprietary ESD control program standards, which created a Tower of Babel-like confusion for OEMs, contract manufacturers and suppliers. The S20.20 standard is the first document from which any electronics manufacturer can tailor an ESD control program specific to an application, then have it formally audited and certified by an ISO 9000 registrar. "S20.20 levels the playing field and allows industry to speak a common language," says ESDA president John Kinnear, who works as a site coordinator and corporate ESD program developer at IBM (Poughkeepsie, NY).
Already U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) contracts specify S20.20 compliance and several major commercial OEMs are implementing the standard in-house and requiring it from their suppliers. Within the next five years, more than a third of manufacturing facilities will be certified to S20.20, predicts Steve Halperin, senior vice president of the ESDA and president of the ESD consulting and instrument companies, Stephen Halperin & Associates Ltd. and Prostat Corp. (Bensenville, IL).
"S20.20 is a document adaptable to virtually any commercial static-sensitive environment. It covers the fundamentals like telecom and computer technology, but it is also going to impact industries ranging from automotive to medical electronics," says Halperin.
Military initiative
The genesis of this groundbreaking document began in the 1990s with the U.S. government's effort to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Ordered to use industry standards wherever possible, the DOD searched in vain for a suitable commercial ESD standard to replace the outdated Mil-Std-1686. When then Secretary of Defense William Perry contacted the ESDA about developing a standard that could be used by both military and commercial manufacturers, "we eagerly jumped at the opportunity," says David Swenson, past president of the ESDA and technical service specialist at 3M's Electronic Handling and Protection Division (Austin, TX).
The military's timing coincided with commercial manufacturers' growing frustration over multiple standards documents. In the early days of ESD control, companies developed proprietary policies that they felt gave them a competitive advantage. Then, as the electronics industry grew more interdependent and contract manufacturing took off, suppliers and contract manufacturers were expected to conform to each OEM's ESD plan. "It became a nightmare for companies to establish separate standards and guidelines for each OEM," says Halperin, and ended up costing all parties time and money.
In addition, the common standards that were available either had too much information, making compliance difficult, or were incomplete, covering only components or ESD control materials. And while some of these standards called for auditing and compliance verification, they did not define how the auditing should be performed. The military's initiative gave commercial manufacturers the motivation necessary to "get hold of this tiger and tame it," says Halperin.
That's how military, space and commercial ESD experts, the latter represented by OEMs such as Motorola, IBM and Intel, came together to create ANSI/ESD S20.20-1999: Development of an Electrostatic Discharge Control Program. Unlike most of the ESDA's other standards, S20.20 is not a test method document but a "true" standard covering all elements of a static control program for protecting devices to 100-volt sensitivities. "It outlines both requirements and guidance in the same document for the first time and provides a basis for auditing and verification, which no other standard does," says Swenson.
S20.20 was designed to be flexible so that any electronics company-from wafer fabs to field service providers-can choose the elements necessary to set up and write a program specific to an application. It also provides "for the first time a clear understanding of what companies have to do as a minimum to make sure static is not an influence on their product," says Swenson.
These minimum baseline requirements are detailed in the standard's two major sections. The administrative section outlines documentation, training and process requirements. The technical section covers electrical and mechanical requirements, such as grounding, personal grounding, protected areas and packaging.
"Only a few elements are absolutely required," says Kinnear. "Manufacturers have to have an ESD process plan, training plan and compliance verification plan. They also must address how people are grounded or bonded, describe the technical elements for an electrostatic protected area (EPA) and how to package the parts within an EPA, and develop a strategy for what to do when parts leave the EPA."
Third-party compliance verification
OEMs and their partners that adopt the standard can improve efficiencies and reduce the cost of developing, implementing and maintaining an ESD control plan, according to the ESDA. But perhaps more important, the certification program designed in conjunction with the standard's ESD control elements ensures "a consistent quality level everyone can count on," says Kinnear.
The ESDA created the independent, third-party certification program and is training ISO 9000 registrars to audit processes against the standard. While S20.20 is not a component of ISO 9000, certification is "easier for companies that are ISO 9000 certified," says Kinnear. "But it is still possible for these registrars to certify companies not ISO 9000-compliant."
 Technicians working on a PCA line at Celestica. |
So far, the ESDA has trained registrars in North America and Asia, and at least 12 other registrar companies have requested training. The certification and training program was developed with the help of Det Norske Veritas (DNV), an international ISO 9000 auditing company that was also the first to receive authorization from the ESDA to conduct S20.20 audits. By year end, two other global registrars-Quality Management Institute and British Standards Institution-may also be authorized to conduct the audits.
DNV completed its first S20.20 audit and certification last September at Celestica Inc. (Toronto), the electronics manufacturing services provider that earlier this year ranked first in Business Week's 100 best-performing technology companies. Celestica got a head start on implementing S20.20 because its corporate ESD program manager played a key role in writing-and advocating-the common standard. "We were able to see that this standard would have wide-ranging benefits," says Ron Gibson, who also chairs the ESDA standards committee and facility certification group.
"Celestica's goal was to set up manufacturing lines in similar fashion all over the globe. We didn't want to have customer-specific manufacturing lines and separate ESD control programs," says Gibson. "S20.20 allows us to set up a single ESD program for multiple OEM customers and move products seamlessly between lines without retooling or retraining employees."
While it might seem that contract manufacturers stand to gain the most from a common ESD standard, Gibson says all industry players benefit from S20.20. "It's not just OEMs purchasing from contract manufacturers. There are also OEMs buying from other OEMs, and neither side wants to implement another company's standard. S20.20 is equally beneficial to all."
First certified facility
Celestica's Don Mills site, which manufactures electronic components for OEMs such as IBM and Sun Microsystems, was the first facility in the world to implement and be certified to the new standard. "Companies either have to make large wholesale changes or just reformat their current policies to comply with the standard. We were in the latter group," says Gibson. "We didn't have to make major changes to the technical elements, we just reformatted and reworded our current program to fit the S20.20 mold."
One change the company did make was to formalize its practice of periodic audits. Now all sites must conduct audits at specified times and in a similar fashion. Celestica also created a uniform training plan for all sites. But the biggest challenge to implementing S20.20 was convincing its OEM customers that a common standard would be a major improvement over home-grown ESD programs.
Now that it has the backing of its customer base, Celestica has made S20.20 a corporate standard and required that it be implemented at all 37 of its global manufacturing sites. It is also working toward certifying as many sites as possible over the next year.
 An overview of a PCA line at Celestica working under the guidance of S20.20. |
The only other facility to receive S20.20 certification is Lucent Technologies' Merrimack Valley Works (North Andover, MA). Like Celestica, the telecom equipment manufacturing site already had a solid ESD program in place. During preparations for an upcoming ISO 9000 audit, Merrimack Valley Works ESD managers decided to expand the audit's scope to include S20.20. "We didn't revamp or set up a program specifically for S20.20, but based on prior analysis I knew we were compliant," says Ted Dangelmayer, who at the time managed Lucent's ESD programs worldwide and is a past president of ESDA. He is now a senior consultant with Ion Systems (Berkeley, CA). "That's one of the desirable features of S20.20. If you have a good program in place, you can become certified with very little effort."
Dangelmayer and his team made only two minor tweaks to the existing plan. They added a test for AC, battery-powered and pneumatic hand tools and better defined how to handle scrap material relative to ESD. But these changes were made after the DNV audit. "We intentionally left those gaps in the process because we wanted to see if the audit would reveal them. And we were pleased to see that they did surface," says Dangelmayer. "DNV found the problems and that gave me confidence that the audit was thorough enough to use in the future at other Lucent locations and also at our suppliers."
Lucent's experience is "exactly the way certification should work if you have a sound ESD program to start with," says Kinnear. "If you have a good ESD program, it might just require a simple rewrite or aligning your process documentation to match the S20.20 standard. Most ESD programs shouldn't require a lot of work."
That's proving true at IBM, which is incorporating the standard into its company ESD policies and plans to seek certification at some locations over the next year. "We have all the elements in place. We're just lining them up a bit to match the S20.20 standard," says Kinnear. The OEM is also starting to require its suppliers to comply with the standard.
Meanwhile, other industry players are implementing the standard, including major OEMs-the likes of Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard, Boeing and Motorola-and almost every contract manu- facturer. But the speed at which facilities gain S20.20 certification will depend on how quickly registrars can be trained and accredited, and the ESDA is expanding its training program to meet demand.
"Acceptance has been much faster than we anticipated," says Kinnear. It seems a clear, common ESD control program standard has never looked so good.
____________________________________
Getting started on S20.20
Because most every electronics manufacturer has an ESD control process or procedure in place, implementing S20.20 could be as simple as aligning these current policies with the standard's minimum requirements. For companies without a current ESD plan, the standard describes fundamental ESD control principles and offers guidance on developing a plan.
But for any company seeking to learn more about this new ESD control standard, the first step is to download it from the ESDA's Web site at www.esda.org/standards.html. Download the free document, then consider purchasing the association's ESD TR20.20 Handbook. Priced at $150 for ESDA members and $200 for non-members, the handbook provides additional guidance on developing, implementing and monitoring an S20.20-based ESD control program. It closely parallels the structure of the S20.20 standard itself, covering personnel safety, administrative requirements and technical requirements outlined in the standard.
ESD coordinators can use these two documents to either write a new program or compare their current program with S20.20 requirements. After all process changes are identified and implemented, the next step is to monitor the plan and adjust as needed. Then perform a self-audit, preferably using someone not intimately familiar with your factory's process. Use a checklist to verify that improvements have provided meaningful benefits, such as reducing dropout rates, returns and reworks. "The whole crux is to continuously monitor, evaluate and make corrections as you go along," says the ESDA's Swenson.
Once S20.20 procedures are running smoothly and compliance is properly documented, consider requesting a formal audit from an ISO 9000 registrar who has been trained to conduct S20.20 certification assessments.
Maintaining the proper paper trail may be the biggest hurdle to S20.20 compliance. "The process of developing an S20.20 plan is not very difficult, but you must have the records in place that prove you are doing what you say you are doing," says Swenson. Even personnel training-a critical part of S20.20-must be thoroughly documented. "Employees must be brought in early so that they understand the changes surrounding procedures and equipment and why the changes are necessary." The training scheme should include training new hires before they interact with the product and recurrent training for new products or processes. A plan must also be in place for de-certifying employees.
These and other issues related to S20.20 implementation will take center stage at the ESDA's annual symposium in Portland, OR, Sept. 9-13. Over the next several years, the association will offer additional seminars and self-guided training modules for support as S20.20 grows.-SG