While the A-620 assemblies standard has been around since 2002, a new section on testing criteria is seeing growing industry acceptance.
BY MATT VINCENT
The annual Wiring Harness Manufacturer’s Association (WHMA; www.whma.org) conference, held April 10 - 13 in San Jose, CA began with WHMA chairman Lyle Fanning enumerating the trade association’s successes over the past year. In opening remarks, Fanning averred that 2007 finds the association in a period of “significant growth, approaching its highest membership.”
Reminding those in attendance of WHMA’s charter to provide wiring harness makers and suppliers with “the knowledge and resources to successfully grow their businesses,” Fanning went on to urge continual interaction and networking among the group’s membership as vital to its overall mission.
Compounding this assertion, Fanning challenged attendees to “meet three new people or contacts” during the show, the better to aid their businesses in “solving a problem,” whether of a technical, procedural, or organizational nature.
All things A-620
Chief among WHMA’s big successes from the past year, Fanning cited the finalization of the latest revision to the IPC/WHMA-A-620 cable testing standard [“Requirements and Acceptance for Cable/Wire Harness Assemblies”], known colloquially as “A-620 Rev A.” A joint endeavor of WHMA and IPC (www.ipc.org), the updated document is a thickly bound manual of workmanship standards that incorporates expanded pictorial and graphical content as well as an entirely new section on testing.
Adding to a general buzz surrounding all things A-620 at the show, WHMA also presented its annual “Bud & Gus Award” to Cirris Systems’ (www.cirris.coms) president Marlin Shelley and sales director Brent Stringham for their “instrumental contributions” in helping to foster the standard’s growing acceptance, and especially for their efforts in handling the recent revision.
Shelley in particular was recognized for his role in authoring the standard’s new “Test” section. The A-620 standard was released in 2002 without such a section; Cirris says it worked with other WHMA and IPC members in creating it. The addition of the section was named the most significant upgrade to the standard’s Rev A, which was released in July of 2006.
According to Cirris, the Test section specifies classifications for assemblies based on their intended use as:
- General Electronic Products (Class 1), including consumer products, some computers/peripherals, and hardware suitable for applications where the major requirement is the function of the completed assembly;
- Dedicated Service Electronic Products (Class 2), including communications equipment, sophisticated business machines and instruments where high performance and extended life is required, when uninterrupted service is desired but not critical;
- High Performance Electronic Products (Class 3), including commercial/military products where continued performance/performance-on-demand is critical and equipment downtime cannot be tolerated, and for products used in uncommonly harsh environments where equipment function is mandatory.
The standard encourages the use of cable testing requirements defined for a specific assembly as agreed upon by the assembler and the customer. Alternatively, specifications can be defined by either the assembler or the customer and agreed upon by the other party. In the absence of agreed upon requirements, default requirements are specified.
Is everybody happy?
Separately at the show, in a presentation titled “The A-620 Standard: What is New with Revision A?,” Floyd Bergnatolli of the IPC training and ISO consulting provider Service to Mankind (STM; www.stmtraining.com) posed the question, “How can IPC/WHMA-A-620 make a wire harness manufacturer more profitable, organized, and generally happier?”
Bergnatolli contended that the “number of different contributors to the document is what makes it valuable” when used in conjunction with a training and certification course, such as the one STM provides, which is tailored especially for wire harness manufacturers. The program allows companies to implement the manual “at both the trainer and operator levels,” said Bergnatolli.
Referencing a slide in the presentation titled “620...The road to success,” Bergnatolli further opined that the program’s benefits to manufacturers might include “happy customers,” as well as “bragging rights.” WHMA chairman Fanning then conducted an informal poll of the room, asking how many of those in attendance were “620-certified or thinking of it.” About three-fourth of those in attendance raised their hands.
There was to be discerned a general sense of enthusiasm among the gathered attendees, as representatives of the various harness makers and suppliers took their opportunities in the Q&A portion of Bergnatolli’s talk to voice a strong sense of appreciation for the standard as an ironclad way to document, simplify, and “officialize” their products and processes.
On both days of the San Jose show, a WHMA/IPC-A-620A trainer recertification course was offered.
Spotlight on RoHS
The conference’s General Session featured a presentation by Jeff Shafer, senior vice president of product management at electronic components distributor Newark (www.newark.com), titled “Everything You Need to Know About RoHS But Were Afraid to Ask.”
Shafer’s talk explored the effects his company has observed within the wiring harness industry since last year’s inception of the European Union’s (EU) Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, along with the effects of the associated Waste from Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulations (a complementary EU directive designed to make manufacturers and importers of electronic products responsible for the collection, treatment, and recycling of collected waste materials).
After providing customer implementation examples spanning the consumer, medical and military markets, Shafer reported that results from Newark’s recent RoHS survey concluded that while “many U.S.-based companies are still moving toward compliance, many have a long way to go,” with only 55 to 60% of manufacturers polled having converted their operations to RoHS compliance.
The presentation went on to list the “top RoHS myths,” including such illusions as: “If you’re exempt, you’re not affected.” (Shafer noted that the defense, medical, automotive and portions of the telecom industry are indeed technically exempt from compliance.); “It only affects Europe.” (The presentation reviewed current “RoHS-like” laws in places such as California, Japan, Korea, and especially China-a major player in the world’s RoHS stakes, with more stringent policies than the EU’s; according to Shafer, in China, “it’s not about self-declaration...it’s about China declaration.”); and, “It’s just about lead.” (The EU restriction covers six substances: the four “heavy” metals-lead, mercury, cadmium and hexavalent chromium-as well as polybrominated biphenyls [PBBs] and polybrominated diphenyl ethers [PBDEs]).
Looking to the foreseen effects of RoHS over the next five years, Shafer noted that many suppliers are harboring “concerns about IP, due to testing down to a homogenous level”-the general consensus being, “it’s great [that there are] green laws...but enforcement is the issue!”
Odds and ends
The conference also featured a series of presentations in a program collectively entitled “What’s New with Suppliers.”
Jan Reesman, marketing manager for Industrial Electric Wire & Cable (IEWC; www.iewc.com) touted the company’s ongoing global expansion and technology enhancements, including the implementation of “real-time” e-commerce and supply chain management resources. 2006 also saw IEWC partnering with Peter Augsten Wire & Cable GmbH of Frankfurt, Germany, and purchasing Colonial Wire & Cable, Inc., a distributor in the military/aerospace markets based in Sterling, MA. Also in 2006, said Reesman, IEWC expanded its Mexico operations while adding a Canadian distribution center in Toronto and opening a sales-distribution center in China.
Other supplier updates included: Joe Roberts, tools systems specialist for HellermannTyton, who reviewed the company’s SwiftMark label applicator; Schleuniger’s national sales manager Darren Teasck, who spoke on the company’s CrimpCenter 64 and 65, Tooling Shuttle 60, and StripCrimp 200 products; and Tyco Electronics’ Bob Popdan, who in covering his company’s System III automatic termination system related that the company had surveyed North American wire and harness makers and used the results to improve the system’s applicator and feed system.
The CEO Track and Technical Staff Track sessions included, respectively, “Human Resources: The Key to a Successful Organization,” presented by Michael Affemann, Ph.D; and “Ultrasonics: The Critical Process of Quality Monitoring,” presented by Javier Tenreiro of Stapla Ultrasonics (www.staplaultrasonics.com).
The conference wrapped up with a panel discussion titled “Improving Your Bottom Line through Controlling the Cost of Materials,” which featured the collective insight of IEWC’s Paul Bryant (vice president of sales, marketing and purchasing) and Mike O’Donnell (national sales manager), as well as Norman Adkins, the president of Southwire’s (www.southwire.com) OEM division
MATT VINCENT is senior editor for Connector Specifier.
