Tekmos' Blog

After 6 years at our present location in east Austin, Tekmos is moving to new facilities in west Austin. And we are taking advantage of the move to address the new normal for professional employees. Before the Covid pandemic, we had perhaps 10% of the company working remotely. During the initial lock-down, this percentage went up to 75%, though it has drifted back down to about 50%. We believe that there has been a fundamental change in office organization, and that working from home is not a temporary reaction to the pandemic, but instead a permanent change in the way of doing business. We choose to embrace this change.

The new facilities are mainly for manufacturing. Testing, baking, tape and reeling, and shipping must be done on-site. On the other hand, professionals will work remotely, reducing the need for on-site offices and cubes.

There have been problems associated with half of the company working remotely, with the main one being communications, both external and internal. Externally, the traditional phone system doesn’t work well when there is no one around to answer the phone. So, we are replacing it with a VOIP based system. As a side note, switching to a VOIP system has led to interesting discussions about who really needs a phone.

These days, almost all external customer communications are through video calls. The only calls coming in through the land line are an occasional new customer query, an occasional finance question, and with the clear majority of incoming calls being spam. Does an engineer need a VOIP license, or will he be equally served by transferring the occasional call to him? We decided to drop engineering and most manufacturing from the system, and will use call forwarding to cell phones for those few legitimate calls.

The big communications issue is internal communications, which is mostly resolved with IT solutions. We have provided cameras and headsets, and switched to Microsoft Teams for meetings and informal conversations. That is working well, with most people having adapted to using it as the main means of communication. We are going to switch to a cloud based Microsoft mail server to allow for a tighter integration of email with Teams. File sharing is more difficult, since we are no longer on the same network. We solve this by doing a two-step transfer, using the company servers as an intermediate step. Accounting is also affected, and we are going to switch to a cloud based system.

Do people love remote work? For most, including at Tekmos, they do, and it’s mainly the flexibility. Travel and commute are reduced including the cost of both. There is a reduction of distractions. The ability to travel and live anywhere, including outside of major cities offers workers the ability to be closer to family. A big plus is often an increase in productivity.

At Tekmos we use Microsoft Teams to share, communicate by division and as a company. While we use our company email to share across our divisions, and telephone calls, Microsoft Teams allows us to see, hear, share, and speak to one another as a group or one on one using cameras, microphones and headsets. Tekmos' communication skills have improved greatly which has increased cohesiveness among team members.

US Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that 4.7 million people, which make about 3.4% of the US workforce, were already working remotely before the novel coronavirus took the world by storm. Regular work-at-home has grown 173% since 2005, 11% faster than the rest of the workforce (which grew 15%) and nearly 47x faster than the self-employed population (which grew by 4%) (Global Workplace Analytics’ analysis of 2018 ACS data).

What is the most important issue for remote working? Communication tops the list, with 27% of people mentioning it as their #1 challenge. Remote work makes it harder to read body language, hear what people are saying, ask follow up questions in the hallway, or quickly ask a coworker for clarification at their desk. Lacking social interaction and isolation are close behind. Again, Microsoft Teams offers the ability to see, hear and interact with coworkers.

Best Practices to thrive as a remote worker

Tekmos is thinking seriously about what we want our work paradigm to achieve because of this pandemic. We think we can architect and build systems that will allow us to meet our objectives of an engineering design firm and manufacturer of semiconductors, while maintaining clear and open communication, a key factor in running any company.

What do we need to ask ourselves as we look at the future? Our lease will be expiring the 2nd quarter of 2021. We have begun to make decisions about whether we stay in our current location. Where will we move if we do? Do we lease or buy? We have already learned we can save substantially in overhead by moving and creating a new model for Tekmos.

What is our overall vision of our ideal work system for Tekmos in the future? Many of our team have worked remote already due to the pandemic. Do we consider adapting a partial virtual model and how does all of this fit together?

Executives in traditional industries who spent days and weeks on the road are discovering that a well-managed Zoom meeting can be as effective as a face-to-face — and a lot easier (and less expensive) to organize. While the broad impacts of remote work have yet to be measured across industries and for extended lengths of time, initial studies have found that it can increase productivity and lower employee turnover. (Harvard Business Review)

The study, titled “From Immediate Responses to Planning for the Reimagined Workplace,” found that 77% of respondents expect that the number of employees working primarily from home (at least three days a week) will increase postpandemic.

Tekmos makes replacements for obsolete parts. While we can recreate any old design, our biggest obstacle comes in the packaging of the obsolete parts. In many cases, the packages themselves are obsolete. An example is the BQFP (Bumpered Quad Flat Pack), which was a high pin count package originally developed by AT&T and Intel, and which reached its peak volumes with the Intel 80386SX processor. Today, we are unaware of any vendor that offers this package. Another package that gives us problems are the PLCC packages. The 20 pin is unavailable, and the 28, 68, and 84 pins have very limited availability.

A simple solution is to have customers change their PCB to accommodate a new package. But this has problems. Frequently, the demand for older products is driven by regulatory demands. The same regulations that demand the continued use of obsolete parts also require the use of the original PCBs. Changing the board can require a new, expensive, and time consuming qualification. Remaking the original packages also poses problems.

Older plastic packages require mechanical tooling to form them into the correct shapes. The three main tools are the book mold, which forms the package, the de-junk tool, which removes extruded plastic from between the leads, and a shear and form tool, which cuts the leads from the lead frame, and bends them into the correct shape. These tools are expensive, costing roughly $100K each. An older package may also require a leadframe, which is generally purchased in 50K minimum quantities. Remaking the package can cost on the order of $350K up front, provided you can locate an assembler willing to do it.

Alternatives are needed, and Tekmos offers several. One option is the use of a LGA package. LGA stands for Landed Grid Array, and can be thought of as a BGA type package without the balls. It looks like a PCB with plastic on one side. The parts are formed in a block, and cut apart with a saw, so packages of any size can be made. Tekmos uses this approach to replace smaller PLCC packages. Because the LGA packages are quite thin, they have a maximum size of about 10 mm. Larger packages would tend to warp, and become difficult to attach to the customer’s board.

A second option is adapter cards. These come in two varieties. One option is to use a pattern on the bottom of the adapter that matches up with the original package footprint. We then attach our circuit to the top of the adapter. Our circuit must use a smaller package than the adapter, but this is not a problem with current packaging technology. This approach has a difficulty in that the connections are made under the adapter card, and are difficult to inspect.

Tekmos has had an increase in ASIC products required for military applications. Because of this we have had to incorporate military screening and qualification procedures.

Tekmos follows military screening outlined in Mil-STD-883: Test Method 5004.13. This screening consists of tests dedicated to inspect the design, wafer fabrication, and device assembly of a product and is performed on the entire Lot of parts. The tests include Nondestructive Bond Pulls, Temperature Cycling, Electrical Parameter Tests, and more. So far Tekmos has had a 100% success rate on military screening 5004.13.

Unlike the initial screen procedures, the military qualification procedures are outlined in Mil-STD-883: Test Method 5005.17 and only use a small portion of the Lot for testing. Many of the tests are considered destructive, which ultimately means the parts no longer are active for customer use and must be scrapped. Qualification involves 5 groups of testing; Group A: Electrical, Group B: Mechanical and Environmental, Group C: Life Tests, Group D: Package, Group E: RHA (if applicable).

Group A testing is done in-house once production parts arrive from the dedicated assembler. Tekmos begins screening by performing an initial electrical test to remove any assembly rejects from the Lot. After Initial test, parts are then placed in ovens for a burn-in cycle in accordance with TM 1015, for 160 hours at 125ºC. While the parts are under burn-in, Tekmos constantly monitors the current output of the parts to ensure their electrical stability. Once completed, the parts will run through a tri-temperature screening with the same initial test used pre-burn-in. The parts are tested at 125ºC, 25ºC, and -55ºC to make certain the product is meeting the device specifications.

For Groups B and D, Tekmos sends off parts to an approved test house. These parts, although tested off-site, are constantly being tracked through various communication channels for accurate completion estimates and potential issues needing to be resolved. Once all parts have completed, the test house will send reports and certificates of conformance for the testing performed. The reports are then reviewed by the Production Engineer, Zachary Kolb, and Director of Quality, Kelsey Casto.