RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION FOR COLLECTING STAGE-BY-STAGE MANUFACTURING AND/OR POST-MANUFACTURING INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH A CIRCUIT BOARD

• US 20120146794A1
• Filed: 09/15/2011
• Published: 06/14/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 01/20/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sanmina-SCI Corporation
• Original Assignee: Sanmina-SCI Corporation
• Inventors: Shachar, Rony, Anderson, David, Ramaswami, Srivats
• Granted Patent: US 8,552,867 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 340/572.1
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 19/128 the workpiece itself serves as a record carrier, e.g. by its form, by marks or codes on it
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 19/4183 characterised by data acquisition, e.g. workpiece identification
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/33199 Transponder
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/45031 Manufacturing semiconductor wafers
• CPC Class Codes: H05K 1/0266 Marks, test patterns or identification means
• CPC Class Codes: H05K 2201/09927 Machine readable code, e.g. bar code
• CPC Class Codes: H05K 2201/10098 Components for radio transmission, e.g. radio frequency identification [RFID] tag, printed or non-printed antennas
• CPC Class Codes: H05K 2203/163 Monitoring a manufacturing process
• CPC Class Codes: H05K 3/0052 Depaneling, i.e. dividing a panel into circuit boards; Working of the edges of circuit boards
• CPC Class Codes: H05K 3/0097 Processing two or more printed circuits simultaneously, e.g. made from a common substrate, or temporarily stacked circuit boards H05K3/0052 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: Y02P 90/02 Total factory control, e.g. smart factories, flexible manufacturing systems [FMS] or integrated manufacturing systems [IMS]

Abstract

A radio frequency identification (RFID) tag is coupled to a circuit board to track the specific operating and environmental conditions of each stage as the circuit board passes through one or more manufacturing and/or post-manufacturing stages. An RFID reader and data collector are used at each stage to read the RFID tag and store its identifying information along with processing information, operating conditions, and results for each stage. This permits to quickly and accurately collect manufacturing and post-manufacturing information for each circuit board at various stages as well as the operating conditions for each stage at a particular time. Such manufacturing and/or post-manufacturing metrics can then be retrieved on a stage-by-stage basis for a particular circuit board by an identifier associated with the circuit board.

Claims

1. A method for tracking a circuit board, comprising:

coupling a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag to a substrate including a circuit board, the RFID tag having an associated identifier;

tracking the circuit board through one or more manufacturing stages using the RFID tag to collect one or more manufacturing metrics for the one or more manufacturing stages of the circuit board; and

tracking the circuit board through one or more post-manufacturing stages using the RFID tag to collect one or more post-manufacturing metrics for the one or more post-manufacturing stages of the circuit board.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the RFID tag is coupled to the substrate prior to adding electrical components to the circuit board.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more post-manufacturing stages include at least one of an assembly stage, a warehousing stage, and a distribution stage.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the RFID tag is inserted within an optical inspection hole of the circuit board.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more manufacturing metrics includes operating conditions of the manufacturing process.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the circuit board is integrated into another device during the one or more post-manufacturing stages, the RFID tag used to track the device.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the substrate includes a plurality of dielectric and conductive layers that form a multilayer circuit board.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

associating the identifier with the collected one or more manufacturing metrics and location or status information of the circuit board.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

storing the collected one or more manufacturing metrics and location or status information of the circuit board.

10. A method for tracking a circuit board, comprising:

coupling a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag to a substrate including a circuit board;

assigning an identifier to the RFID tag;

scanning the RFID tag for its identifier at one or more manufacturing stages to track the progress of the circuit board;

obtaining one or more manufacturing metrics for the circuit board at the one or more manufacturing stages;

storing the identifier and the one or more manufacturing metrics for the one or more manufacturing stages of the circuit board;

scanning the RFID tag for its identifier at one or more post-manufacturing stages of the circuit board;

obtaining at least one of a location or a status information for the circuit board at the one or more post-manufacturing stages; and

storing the at least one location or status information for the one or more post-manufacturing stages of the circuit board.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the one or more post-manufacturing stages include at least one of an assembly stage, a warehousing stage, and a distribution stage.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the RFID tag is inserted within an optical inspection hole of the circuit board.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the one or more manufacturing metrics includes operating conditions of the manufacturing process.

14. The method of claim 10, wherein the one or more post-manufacturing stages includes an inventory control stage.

15. The method of claim 10, wherein the circuit board is integrated into another device during the one or more post-manufacturing stages, the RFID tag used to track the device.

16. The method of claim 10, wherein the one or more manufacturing metrics and location or status information is centrally stored by a server.

17. A method for tracking a plurality of components included as part of a composite product, comprising:

scanning radio frequency identification (RFID) tags for one or more different components during one or more manufacturing and post-manufacturing stages of the components, where each RFID tag uniquely identifies a component or subset of components;

collecting information for each component at each of the one or more manufacturing and post-manufacturing stages based on the RFID tags;

assembling a subset of the one or more different components into a product; and

performing validation of the product by scanning the combined RFID tags in the product after a product assembly stage.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising:

collecting information for the assembled product to ascertain whether a particular combination of components results in defective operation of the product; and

using the collected information to avoid subsequent combinations of components known to result in defective operation of the product.