I need advise how to go about meeting 100% compliance in wrist strap testing. It is stated in our procedure that all employee working on the shopfloor must have thier wrist strap tested daily. We have 3 wrist strap stations place at different location. The operator would test their wrist strap when entering the shopfloor which have no barricade, more like an open field which we call it 'blue zone'. I thought of placing the wrist strap station at each entry door but I was caution that it would cause traffic. There may be a way in automation but I believe it will be very costly. Any cheap and effective idea?

What are you using to collect the 'log' that verifies personnel have tested their grounding devices? I could provide suggestions based on that.

Alternatively, are your people wearing appropriate footwear, so you could start phasing protective flooring in for standing operations?

It's been awhile. Aren't the work benches grounded? Are the wrist straps grounded at the bench? Are the chairs gounded or on a conductive mat? Why can't the testing be accomplished at the work stations? Do you have static sensitive parts on the floor? Why worry about the wrist straps upon entering the dept? Are your parts transported in ESD approved containers/bags? Somebody just has to go to the work stations with a meter, no? I can't picture the the need to test wriststraps remote from the work bench unless employees are carrying ESD sensitive components from department to department without protecting the components first. Sorry I'm so confused.:eek: :smokin:

ESD-S20.20-1999: 6.2.2.1 Personnel Grounding Requirements:

"All personnel shall be bonded or electrically connected to ground or contrived ground when handling ESD sensitive items. When personnel are seated at ESD protective workstations, they shall be connected to the common point ground via a wrist strap system.

6.2.2.2 Personnel Grounding Guidance:

"....A log should be maintained which verifies that personnel have tested their personal grounding devices. ...In addition, constant monitoring devices should be functionally checked periodically to ensure that they are operating as designed. ESD protective flooring, used with approved footwear, may be used as an alternative to the wrist strap system for standing operations.....

Originally posted by E Wall
ESD-S20.20-1999: 6.2.2.1 Personnel Grounding Requirements:
"All personnel shall be bonded or electrically connected to ground or contrived ground when handling ESD sensitive items. When personnel are seated at ESD protective workstations, they shall be connected to the common point ground via a wrist strap system.


Nice recitation of the spec. Looks like you and me today, E:biglaugh: .
Why would the wrist straps be tested any where else except the workstations? Even disregarding the traffic in the doorway, why would you do it there? Are the parts on the floor?:bonk: Do you think by entering a department your charge "jumps" on things if you don't touch them? I'm just confused about testing straps remotely from the workstation. When you hook back up at the work point, how do you know you are grounded? :bonk: :smokin:

For organizations dealing with electrostatic sensitive devices, applying the new ANSI ESD S20.20 Standard can improve the situation. From the ESDA website:

New 20.20 Electrostatic Discharge Control Program Standard Published

The ESD Association has approved and published a new standard covering the development of an ESD control program. Approved as an ANSI standard, ANSI/ESD S20.20-1999: Development of an Electrostatic Discharge Control Program covers the requirements necessary to design, establish, implement, and maintain an ESD control program to protect electrical or electronic parts, assemblies and equipment susceptible to ESD damage from Human Body Model (HBM) discharges greater than or equal to 100 volts.

Developed in response to the Military Standardization Reform Act, the new 20.20 is intended to be the commercial replacement for MIL-STD-1686. However, the Department of Defense has yet to act on the document.

The document can be downloaded, for free, from

http://www.esda.org/pdf_files/s2020std.pdf

DNV Certification was the first Registrar to attain accreditation through the ESDA Association to issue certificates to this Standard.

johnnybegood appears to have a grasp of ESD protocols. He has a specific problem. In order to assist you have to know his set-up. Where does the protection begin and why? Of course, that's only my take on his post.:rolleyes: :smokin:

I offered up the quote in case anyone wasn't aware of the exact requirements. During our evaluation, we verified this does not apply to our plant so we aren't even using an ESD system. I keep a hardcopy, just in case....

I may be able to make some cost effective suggestions for automating collection of data from self-tests...but this too depends on his set-up (back to my first question in response).

I think the time delays in originators checking on their posts will happen quite frequently until at least mid Jan. Too many folks with holiday plans... After this Friday, I won't be back until Jan myself, and as it will be a busy month I don't expect to get caught up with all the posts here until late in the month.

Hope Ya'll have a great month! :)

Eileen,

Have a good one and come back like a ball of fire!!:bigwave: :smokin:

The reason for testing the wrist-strap is to ensure they are in good working condition and data are log as per the requirement 6.2.2.2 Personnel Grounding Guidance. The wrist-strap ESD station is made of an ESD tester hook-up to a PC. Thus it is not feasible to install the ESD tester station on individual workstation beside cost, space is also a concern. Operator will then be ESD grounded by having the wrist-strap crocodile clip on the workbench/workstation. We have no issue with that but getting the employee testing the wrist strap is.

Johnnybegood,

I know that the standard says that "A log should be maintained which verifies that personnel have tested their personal grounding devices." In order to cut down on the traffic at the testers, would it be practical to have employees turn in their wrist straps at the end of their shift so that they can be tested and re-issued when they return to work? The person doing the testing could also maintain the log.

Just a thought.

Best Regards,
Hank Fowler

We will be shift to a new site soon. We are assigned to set-up an ESD control at a new site. There are a few proposals in mind, they are 1) conductive flooring with heel strap or shoe 2) wrist strap with continuos monitoring 3)the normal wrist strap with the common grounding point. Would appreciate some feedback on the pros and cons and the cost involve of the above proposal. One of the main criteria is to avoid the need to test the grounding functionality as well as the mobility of the operator.

Dear Mr. Begood, :D

I understand and share your problem. Our production workers arrive at 6AM and the requirement is to test the strap before 9AM. This has relieved the congestion at our 3 stations. The log is still manual, which means we periodically have to audit the log to ensure compliance.

I have worked in companies who had much better systems than my current one. If you are starting from scratch, I would suggest contacting one of the ESD manufacturers, like 3M and get a survey done of your facility. They will suggest a program in keeping with your production needs and point out areas of concern. I've done this twice and the audits were indeed different and specific to the operation.

Personally, I prefer both foot straps and wrist straps, if you are handling PCBs, as it is very easy to forget your wrist strap and zap a board. But foot straps mean that you must have the appropriate floor care and testing.

Also personally, I find that continuous monitoring is a great concept, but the ringing alarms are annoying and employees quickly learn how to override them.

The whole issue that I am facing is to ensure 100% testing compliance regardless if we use wrist or heel strap. We cannot keep on continue to audit and keep reminding the employee about the need to test, it's taking too much energy.

We have replaced wrist strap with ESD shoe since it allows mobility. Initially I thought of introducing a tester with shutter gate. But then again I am not sure if it is a must to ensure the ESD shoe is functional? Another reason of removing the need to test is because the testing will cause bottleneck at the shutter gate. Question is will I be given a NCR if there is no test to determine the ESD shoe functionality? If yes base on which clause of the ISO9000:2000 or TL9000? Pls. advise.

Hi Johnny,

Right off the top off my head I can't think of anything in ISO 9001 that would be hit, but my mind isn't totally clear yet (only one cup of coffee so far). However, it is a good idea to test the shoe at some interval. We us heel straps here and just have one test station (for about 140 production personnel). We require everyone to test their heel straps at some point during the day and have never had a traffic problem.

Just on a side note, are you still using wrist straps at the workstations?

We have close to about 1600 employee working 2 shift 4 crew. The initial plan to introduce the shutter gate is to do away with the tracking of compliance. Beside that by issuing a NCR to the employee for non-compliance is not effective. The shutter gate server as a go no-go control. The only concern is that it may cause bottleneck.

We no longer use wrist strap with the introduction of ESD shoe. The supplier did mentioned that the ESD shoe can last for 1 year. We thought of giving the employee 2 pairs of ESD shoe so that testing of the ESD shoe is not required. Can the ISO auditor issue NCR if we remove the test.

I doubt that an ISO auditor will do anything (ours didn't even ask about ESD). There are a couple places that an auditor could issue against if he was really picky. Part of it depends on your ESD program and how you set it up. If you set up your program based on S20.20 then you are more likely to get a hit for not testing since it requires compliance verification (it also requires using wrist straps when seated at workstations). But, as I said, I doubt that the auditor will even look at the ESD program.

Our ESD program does not base on S20.20 however in TL9000 it did mentioned about ESD.

7.5.5.C.1 Anti-Static Protection – Anti-static protection shall be employed, where applicable, for components and products susceptible to electrostatic discharge (ESD) damage. Consider components and products such as: integrated circuits, printed wiring board assemblies, magnetic tapes and/or disks, and other media used for software or data storage


Base on 7.5.5.C.1, is a test to determine the ESD shoe functionality required?

Here is the way another company handles ESD protection.

(This is a service environment, not manuufacturing. The people are usually handling finished assemblies instead of naked boards or semiconductor components, and in a much lower volume than typical manufacturing plants.)


Each workstation has an ESD mat and an electronic ESD monitor. The monitor continually "monitors" the the integrity of the system. There are audible and visual signals if the ground integrity is lost or if the wrist strap resistance is too high or low.
The technician connects the wrist strap cord to the connection point on the mat. Most workstations also have an auxiliary connection point for additional workers or visitors.
The monitor is functionally tested annually. This is done on-site by the company calibration lab, and serves to verify that the systems work.


The monitor system is a standard commercial product available through almost any electronic products distributor. (Can I mention the brand name?)

johnnybegood said:

7.5.5.C.1 Anti-Static Protection – Anti-static protection shall be employed, where applicable, for components and products susceptible to electrostatic discharge (ESD) damage. Consider components and products such as: integrated circuits, printed wiring board assemblies, magnetic tapes and/or disks, and other media used for software or data storage

Based on that text, I wouldn't say that testing is required. As long as you can show that you have taken steps and have things in place to prevent ESD and protect product that would meet the requirement..

I'm going to view this from a little different angle. Instead of worrying about how you are going to eliminate each incident of an employee not verifying their strap, maybe you should look at how do you make it IMPORTANT to the employees to perform that verification.

One method could be to request corrective action from the individual(s) that supervise/manage the production environment. Make it important to them, and they will make it important to those under them. But, beyond beating management into submission; have you implemented some form of ESD training that not only explains the requirement, but defines the reasoning behind it (including examples).

Static discharge and the resulting damage is something that typically goes unseen, and may be hard to accept as a "real" problem unless you can provide some practical examples. We have in the past provided our employees with electron-microsope images so that they could see the actual results of the damage (ESD burn-throughs across micron-size gates appears as a huge problem).

Iam happy to find an ESD thread and here is an opportunity to resurrect this thread with real life ESD Questions:

1.Do you use Foot Strap or ESD shoes? Which one you find more effective? Any pros and Cons, suggestions?

2.Do you have practice to check ESD Wrist &Heel-Toe tester every time you enter the ESD area?

3. Do you train and Qualify your Janitors on ESD awareness? your views..

Thanks,
Govind.

The last company I warked for had strict ESD requirements. All who entered an ESD area had to test for ESD grounding and sign a log each time the area was entered. All personnel (including subcontracted janitors) that entered the area on a regular basis received annual ESD training.
Most people used a foot strap and disposable foot straps were provided for visitors. However, I found that my Tony Lama boots would pass the ESD test without the staps.

Our wrist strap tester was a simple LED indication for continuity. I believe it was purchased from 3M. it was located directly outside the work areas along side the ESD lab coat racks. the employees were required to put on their lab coats and test wrist straps (plug in and push the button) prior to entering the work area.
The log was a prepared matrix for each day of the week with each employees name on it. they simply had to check the box and ititial. Each day the supervisor would check the log looking for folks who may have entered without following procedure (it was also a quick absentee check).
Each week the logs were gathered and reviewed and sent to records.
As I recall workers in these areas had to be certified to at least level-II and some were level-III.
all work stations and equipment were checked on a monthly basis for proper grounding and "SAFETY" resistance measurements. Each station was numbered and the readings were recorded on a log.
I cannot remember ever having an auditor or a resident DCAS find fault.
:2cents:

Jim,
I recently came across with another product which actually measures the resistivity on right and left heel straps/shoes and records in a centralized database. If the organization has multiple ESD locations within the building, all results are stored in the same database with locations ID. Also has features like Employee ESD recertification due reminder and many others.
Regards,
Govind.

Its to costly to implement for 1500 employee

Its to costly to implement for 1500 employeeOkay. How costly is it when ESD destroys a product or an instrument used to check a product? How many faulty products can ultimately end up being shipped? What are the ramifications of shipping product destroyed by ESD? Can you lose the entire contract?

No antagonism implied here, just curious how you make a value judgement as to when something is too costly.:truce: