We’ve spoken at length in these pages about the virtual factory. But what about the virtual factory tour?

By this, I don’t mean the flashy, MTV-style videos found on so many company websites today. Instead, a live plant tour, executed using cameras and PCs.

I have been studying manufacturers to determine whether, in the wake of the coronavirus surge, they are noticing changes in the way customers decide where to put production, and whether that’s a permanent change or a temporary fix. According to my unscientific sample, the answers are “yes” and “we’re not sure.”

Count Teresa Huber, president and chief executive of Intervala, among those seeing changes. The EMS company, which has sites in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, is substituting video conferencing for onsite meetings and in-person audits.

Understand what the transaction means for customers.

Your PCB supplier has been acquired. Will this acquisition benefit you as a board buyer? Or will it lead to higher prices and a reduced level of service?

 The answer may depend on how you react.

Vendor acquisitions can cause supply-chain disruptions, especially when the acquiring firm has a competing product line. What is troubling about these transactions is few PCB buyers seem to understand the real economics involved, or why they happened in the first place and what it means to them as customers.

Can a head in the sand avoid a corpse in the water?

“We’re line down.”

Sorry to hear that. (Not really, but fake empathy makes them feel better.) They got the job as the low bidder. You reap what you sow.

“We’ve been building this product for five years. That’s 22,846 units manufactured successfully and counting.”

Congratulations. You just confirmed the adage that one “oh s--t” equals one million “attaboys.”

“Not a single electrocuted hot-tubber in that time.”

How reassuring. It is of such integral services as these that our gross national product is composed.

An hour-by-hour look at the quickturn fabrication process.

We were presented with a challenge: Is it possible to build 10 prototype 12-layer boards in 72 hours? It wasn’t a rhetorical question; a customer really wanted just such an order. So, with time at a premium, our engineers put their heads together and created a “plan of attack” that optimized all resources. One key to success is performing a number of the steps in sequence as needed, so panels are ready when they are required. We’ll describe the procedure hour-by-hour as follows:

Hour 1: The CAM operator runs a DRC (design rule check) process and accepts or rejects the data files. If a problem exists, they contact the buyer to work out a solution; e.g., if two traces are too close, and one needs to be moved. Once the data file is accepted, the next action is to set up the innerlayers.