A process flow details the operations necessary for the build. For example, Stencil Printing, Auto Placement, and Hand Placement are all operations in a typical SMT process flow. You define process flows in the Process Definition window of the NPI client application.

Each operation in a process flow can contain one or more steps; each step can contain one or more activities. Activities can be as simple as text instructions for an operator or more complex data collection tasks with several levels of completion, acknowledgement, or supervisory approval in support of CFR Part 11 Compliance and signoff requirements.

Operation groups

Operations in a process flow may be placed into operation groups. Operation groups are similar to lines on a factory floor. For example, in electronics manufacturing, process engineers may create an operation group to represent a surface mount line. When you assign factory resources, physical lines can be associated with operation groups with a single action.

The following illustration shows a Through-Hole operation group containing Auto Insertion and Hand Insertion operations as well as Hand Solder, Selective Solder, and Wave Soldering operations..

Operation aliasing

Operation aliasing allows process engineers to group similar operations from one or more process flows for reporting purposes. For example, several inspection operations such as AOI, manual inspection, and final inspection could all be assigned an Alias of Inspect. Once assigned, reports can be generated against the Inspect alias that takes all three operations into account instead of having to manually specify each operation in the report.