Hello Alexandro!
I too have been tech supervisor on a repair line, and I was blessed with a master technician who taught me the following line speed tricks:
1) Keep track of symptoms and what fixed them. Jbartos (a great help, by the way) suggested a "knowledge base". I used a paper notebook and took info for a week.
2) Segregate your boards into groups by their symptoms.
3) Have troubleshooter(s) work into each symptom pile, one group at a time. She or he will become amazingly fast at nailing the faults within each group, because the list of faults will be sharply limited.
4) Any unit that is not quickly fixed by going through the now-standard fauilt fixes should be put aside (keep segregated by symptom) for your most skilled troubleshooter to look at once every couple of days or so. In these cases the troubleshooter will not have to waste time trying the standard fixes.
5) Refine the symptom/fixes list as your troubleshooters do their thing. Your best troubleshooter can add symptom/fixes as he or she works the "tough" pile - be sure to give praise and honors on this wise person, and they will shine like the Sun for you, while encouraging others to do their best work too.
6) On a regular basis, track and organize a list of fix counts, starting with the one with the most counts, then then next most counts, and so on for 1-2 more fixes. Group the remainder as "OTHER". This is called a Pareto chart and is a good tool to feedback what is failing to the designers or your supplier. You can show them what your #1 problem is right off the Pareto, making it tough for them to ignore your problem. When they put improvements in to stop #1 problem, #2 problem becomes the new #1, and so on. Works great!
Let us know how it goes, Alexandro!
Kevin VanZuilen "KevinVZ"
