I’m often asked what I think the electronics manufacturing company of the future will look like. I know this: It will be different than it looks today.

Why am I so confident? In part because today’s firms don’t look like they did when I entered the industry in 1991 (yikes!). Back then, dominant players were the bluebloods like IBM, Digital Equipment and Hewlett-Packard (you may know them as HP). These were all-in-one firms. They designed chips, fabbed boards, built assemblies, and shipped their own products.

Then someone got the bright idea that “merchant” (the terme de ce jour, as opposed to captive, meaning in-house) manufacturing businesses could unlock value by spreading costs of production across many customers and ensuring close(r)-to-steady-state operations. In reality, that never quite happened, but the mass outsourcing that took hold has never ceded ground.

There’s a saying in journalism that you should follow the money. As I note in our annual CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY Top 50 listing of the largest EMS companies, which starts on page 36, we track more than 115 publicly traded EMS companies. And that’s even after some really large ones like TPV and Shenzhen HyteraEMS have gone private in recent years. While private equity is in the game today in a major way, we’ve seen this play out before. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, fabricators and EMS companies were the hottest dates at the prom. Then midnight struck in the form of the dot-com bust. Billions in valuation went poof. So did the PE guys. They are back with a vengeance, but it won’t be forever.

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A top-down approach for reducing error-prone and time-intensive manual operations.

Last month we talked about the often ambiguous, unstructured design data packages running rampant in the PCB industry, which drive non-value-add administrative tasks across all phases of our data exchange and processes, and we underscored the urgency to integrate “smart engineering” data-driven processes, as becoming more efficient as an industry in reducing cost and NPI cycles should be a critical objective to all organizations. What exactly do we mean when we talk about smart engineering or data-driven processes? Buzzwords and acronyms are all around us, such as digital transformation, RPA (repetitive or robotic process automation), BPM (business process management), SaaS (software as a service), etc. All encompass a similar objective: optimizing our processes throughout the enterprise.

In the PCB manufacturing facility, some classic examples of duplicated data entry when receiving a new design package are in the front-end engineering process steps (FIGURE 1). Several generic steps occur across the industry, and all of these must occur, with the sequence varying based on the company or manufacturing facility. In many cases, each of these process steps are completely segregated software applications, which in essence results in non-value-added administrative tasks.

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AOI during fabrication will catch most pad shorts caused by etching.

This month we look at etching faults on PCBs. This is no ordinary set of pads. They are for an 01005 chip capacitor, the second-smallest chip component available. (Yes, there is an even-smaller size.) The 01005 component package is approximately 0.016" by 0.008" or 0.4mm by 0.2mm and small enough for most members of your staff.

Unfortunately, we found small copper shorts between the two mounting pads on one of our test boards that were not picked up during fabrication. The defective boards were spotted during printing trials. The nickel and gold plating are also present. As with many copper shorts, this is related to bare board etching and imaging, but they should have been picked up earlier.

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An out-of-body experience leads to introspection.

By the time you read this, I’ll be having an anniversary of sorts. Commemorating, not celebrating.

Your life can change in an instant. Let me explain.

Two years ago, at the end of May 2019, our team exhibited a new CT scanning machine at an aerospace trade show in Southern California. Nothing newsworthy there. Display the machine, a kind of entry-level CT scanning system; answer questions from any and all; harmlessly scan a few souvenir water bottles to interactively show the novelty of nondestructive 3-D imaging. Do the usual glad-handing and manufactured sincerity that comes with the show gig. Expectantly snag a few promising leads over three tedious days. Inspire somebody to part with their cash. Show team solidarity around our maypole of a machine by memorializing the moment with a group photo. Say kumbaya, crate it up and dodge forklifts while prepping for shipment back north to our facility. There the system will go into working display as a demo unit. Goodbye, crate. Mission accomplished, take the rest of the week off and enjoy the sights and sounds of Southern California, rekindling my youth and visiting friends, savoring the week’s success over cocktails with broiled fish in Seal Beach. Life is good.

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