TTT361 Waveform Generator Overview

A look at function generators with arbitrary waveform capability.

[@trainliker100]

Wavetek made good products, but did have a period where they were having a lot of returns and a lot of internal factory problems. I know this because I was a manager at a small electronics company having some similar problems. The son of my lady friend was a manager at Wavetek and said they had up to 75% returns (as we were experiencing) until they hired a new QA manager. So I went down to San Diego where he introduced me to this QA manager and he explained everything to me. Previously, they had "QA Inspectors" all over the place to the point where about 10% of their staff of 400 employees at the time were inspectors. He got rid of ALL of them. He didn't believe the path to quality was by trying to inspect it in. He had a staff of three people who were mainly statisticians to monitor what was happening - they didn't inspect anything. He did train stockroom personnel to spend part of their time inspecting items brought in from the outside, however. And with each lot of blank circuit boards received, a couple were sent to the wave soldering station to test to make sure there was no contamination and they soldered well before the lot was accepted. Also, before his arrival, they had problems with one waveform generator in particular that was extremely tedious to calibrate. Technicians were only allowed one hour - which wasn't nearly enough. So it would get passed on to "inspection" and fail, and go back to the beginning for recalibration. After the third or fourth time through, enough time had been been spent to get the job done and it passed. He ended that sort of nonsense and replaced with thinking that you take whatever time you need to do things right. And that YOU are responsible for the quality of the product when it leaves your hands, and that includes anything you might see that was previously wrong. You were encouraged to speak up. He believed that most people WANT to do quality work and you basically just have to give them permission to perform it. He got the return rate down from 75% to 1% in less than a year. I shamelessly stole his ideas and got the return rate where I worked down from 75% to a half percent in about a year. I added another twist. I created a "Corrective Action Report" that ANYBODY in the company could fill out for ANYTHING. The CEO saw them all, and assigned them to various managers to resolve. And there were timelines and follow up for all of them. And they might not necessarily be assigned to the manager of the impacted department. Some of the things weren't practical but many were as all these things got hashed out. But to give an idea of pent up frustration and people wanting improvements, in the first week of this program, we had over 200 submissions - and that was for a small company with 40 employees. If you are a manager, it is quite likely that the person doing the hand on work knows more about it than you do.

[@felixcat4346]

Thanks for posting this its very informative.

[@Blueglow]

Great video. I'll start pointing people to this.

[@EngineeringVignettes]

I am slowly amassing some generators are well, in my search for good test gear. Currently my favourite WG is the HP 33120A and, for the SG, it would be the HP 6647A. I have a few HP 3314A's that I am hoping to rebuild into one functional units as well, to get a good sweep/marker generator. On the list of things to-do :D Looking forward to the review of the new WG's. Curious to see if they are worth the price and if they are well built. Cheers,

[@richardgray8593]

At 2:13 I can't make it out: Bubbla Electronics? Guggala Electronics? ETA: I slowed it down and listened, and then I listened with my eyes closed and all the concentration that I could muster and FINALLY I comprehended something that resulted in a valid KZbin search hit: Blueglow Electronics. That's GOTTA be it, amirite?

[@rebeccarainharrod]

Yep, blueglow would be my guess.

[@EngineeringVignettes]

I heard Blueglow, so I think he is referring to Mark's channel.

[@Blueglow]

Yes

[@richardgray8593]

@@Blueglow I'm glad he mentioned you. You've got a great channel.