When you tried to go ahead with PCB fabrication and assembly with a contract manufacturer, there are many things you really need to understand, which is not only for sourcing managers but also for electronics engineers and PCB designers.

You can get whether it is at a reasonable cost and time spending only if you understand what they say and how they proceed with it, especially go turnkey PCB assembly. 

It isn’t enough anymore to simply understand how to arrange the circuitry so that it works, it is also important to understand why that circuitry works the way that it does, along with the many conditions that can change that. 

The areas you should know include:

• Fabrication

• Assembly

• Component engineering

• Supply chain

• Marketing

PCB Fabrication

We probably have a good understanding of how a PCB is fabricated. But as with any subject, there is always more that can be learned to help design and produce a better board. 

Do you understand the capabilities and limitations of your PCB fabricator? 

Do you understand the nature and characteristics of the materials being used and how these will affect your design, manufacturing cost, and delivery time, especially in high-speed applications?

Is it better to increase the layer count of the board for greater signal integrity, or reduce the count to minimize the cost? 

Understanding these various points may well end up making the difference between success or failure in your design.

PCB Assembly

As with fabrication, there is a lot more to understand about PCB assembly than simply maintaining the correct distance between components. 

Most designers have a firm grasp of the basics of design for manufacturability (DFM), but do you go deeper into these subjects by applying the correct DFT, DFA, DFF, and other DFX rules? 

Do you know that the DFM rules will change depending on what soldering method is used to build the board? 

Have you placed your parts to also allow for easy access to cables, switches, and other human interfacing parts during system assembly? 

Many boards are laid out with adequate part spacing but fail because a connector was rotated incorrectly for its mating cable.

Component Engineering

When you begin a new circuit board project, do you jump right in, or do you verify that the parts being used are correct? 

There are many factors that can affect a part, including its availability and cost, to say nothing of its electrical performance. 

Often a design will come through with parts that are out of date because the schematic was built using copied sheets from an older design. 

Project managers or PCB designers need to check for all these potential problems and understand how to resolve any that they find.

Supply Chain

Speaking of component price and availability, do you keep your finger on the pulse of what parts should or shouldn’t be used on a board?

A circuit board job can come to a screeching stop during assembly because the parts they rely on are no longer available. 

Purchasers or terminal dealers should at least have resources, like their manufacturing partners, that they can use to verify the parts before they finalize the design.

Marketing

Do you know the purpose of your product design, where it will be used, and how? These details can impact the operation of the board which could change how it should be designed. 

Also, simply understanding the product’s schedule and requirements could help you to plan for and hit design benchmarks that will help the markets to be more successful.

There’s More

Of course, there’s more, these are only a small sampling of the topics that today’s Party A should include in their repertoire of knowledge, and there are many more that we haven’t even talked about. 

One of the defining characteristics of our industry is the need to continually grow in our knowledge and skills. The company that needs third-party PCB fabrication and assembly must stay at the forefront of new ideas and technology, and this is also a trend under the integration of the industry.