The Digital Medical Revolution

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Zulki Khan, founder and CEO of NexLogic Technologies Inc., offers his unique perspective on manufacturing trends as a PCB turnkey solutions provider based in Silicon Valley. He discusses additional requirements that are now necessary to compete in different industry sectors, most notably medical, which he says is set for a “digital revolution.”

Nolan Johnson: Today, we’re talking about the industry from your point of view. Zulki, can you start by introducing yourself?

Zulki Khan: I have been in the industry for over 25 years. I started with a company out of Chicago that gave me the basic industry knowledge I needed, and then I started NexLogic in 1995. We offer full PCB services, including one-stop, turn-key solutions, to global hardware companies, including Apple, Phillips, Sony, Google, Facebook, and Uber.

We offer PCB design and layout, fabrication, assembly, and testing. People can come to us with a schematic of their hardware design. We do the layout by using CAD software packages like Allegro or PADS from Mentor, a Siemens business, and Altium. Next, we perform the layout design and send the data for fabrication for the bare boards. We then assemble these boards with components and test, debug, and analyze to make sure they are working the way they were designed.

I have a degree in electrical engineering as well as a master’s in business administration. We have done projects for the “who’s who” from every different market segment. Although the essence of manufacturing stays the same, different industry sectors have additional requirements. The medical and aerospace sectors have their own standards that have to be followed to ensure that the products are successful; for example, in medical, there are requirements to address patient risk in case of a product recall.

One thing that becomes extremely critical in those two segments is the traceability of components. How much paperwork do you have to keep in the archive, and for how long? With lot, batch, and date code traceability requirements, there are certain things you have to keep for as long as seven years in some cases. That way, if something happens in the field, customers can go back and see who made the device, what the lot codes are, which country it was made in, and so on. This might become necessary to better evaluate product recalls.

To read this entire interview, which appeared in the November 2019 issue of SMT007 Magazine, click here.