ANSI/ESD S20.20 is a standard that provides guidelines to electronic industries that manufacture, assemble, test and package or otherwise handle the electrical and electronic parts, assemblies and equipment on how to protect their ESD sensitive items from being damaged by electrostatic discharge (ESD).

Somewhere in March 2007, ESD Association has released ANSI/ESD S20.20-2007 for industries reference and use at ESD Association.

What is new in ANSI/ESD S20.20-2007?
• ANSI/ESD S20.20-2007 standard spells out the applicability of the Standard to electronic industries that handles ESD sensitive items which are susceptible to ESD damage of less than 100 Volts HBM with the use of tighter control limit and additional ESD controls.
• Organizations are required to appoint a process owner (ESD Control Program Manager or coordinator) to verify the compliance of the ESD control program to the Standard.
• The technical requirement limits with the source of Standard references are displayed in each ESD Control program plan Technical Requirements section for Grounding/Bonding system, Personnel Grounding and Protected Area. This simplifies the user comprehension of the Technical requirements mentioned.

What ANSI/ESD S20.20-2007 standard is missing?
• ANSI/ESD S20.20-2007 does not provide additional guidance as what ANSI/ESD S20.20-1999 version did. In this guidance, a wider overview on each section is provided to the user.
• The equipment portion that includes the AC powered tools, battery powered, pneumatic hand tools and automatic handlers are omitted from ESD Control program plan Technical Requirement section and are included as additional process considerations.

As a whole ANSI/ESD S20.20-2007 Standard simplifies user understanding, however the good sides of previous Standard ANSI/ESD S20.20-1999 should not be forgotten.

ANSI/ESD S20.20-1999 and ANSI/ESD S20.20-2007 will both be available to download until the end of 2008 at ESD Association.

It is recommended for any user to view both ANSI/ESD S20.20 standards for better comprehension before setting up an ESD Control program for your organization.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 12:59 and is filed under ANSI/ESD S20.20. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.