Book Reviews

Sammy Shina is one of the old Nepcon West Lecture Team who I have met on a number of occasions at the shows in Anaheim, California. His design and quality related workshops were a regular feature of the conference and now he turns his hand to another book, ideal for the professional process engineer. One of the important things when dealing with this type of dry subject is to take the reader with you to the process so the methodology of data gathering and interpretation can be best understood, I believe Sammy succeeds.

Chapter four was particularly interesting to the reviewer as it dealt with the use of Parts Per Million (PPM) defect monitoring or as the Americans like to call it, Defects Per Million Opportunities (DPMO). As I am currently running the SMART Group PPM Monitoring Project it had particular relevance. Sammy explains how this type of monitoring can link directly into a Six Sigma project. He illustrated correctly some of the pitfalls and how to overcome them so companies can benefit from this important benchmarking technique.

Although the contents of chapter six on costings may have been covered by other authors I felt that Mr Shina's coverage was very informative and succinct. The true costing throughout the life cycle of the product is a very useful reference, particularly where it can be related to changes in design and yield improvements in the process. What better way to justify PCB layout changes or modification to the process during production, a balance sheet never lies! This was a well written section and could be expanded in the future, a possible book?

Some of the text in this book was heavy going but Sammy has done more than most to bring the subject matter alive and make it approachable to engineers and process staff. Often a criticism of technical books, there are not enough illustrations and photographs to support the material and I for one would like to see more. One could say that this topic does not lend itself to extra illustrative material but it helps sell the books. More examples to illustrate point is important as often books like this are sold at exhibitions and conferences, engineers only having a few seconds to flick through the pages. Publishers and marketing departments please take note.

This is a difficult subject well handled by Sammy Shina; there are a couple of points I would not agree with but that's engineering for you.

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