PCB Technologies Focuses on an All-in-One Solution

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes

PCB Technologies reached out to us with news about their new All-In-One offering. Intrigued, we followed up and spoke with VP of Marketing and Business Development Arik Einhorn to get more details on the All-In-One services. Here, we’ve included the short article and interview. The company’s All-in-One program targets more sophisticated, higher-complexity PCB work in the U.S. and Europe with the scalability to handle prototyping all the way through mass production if needed.

Managing Communication Between Your Board Designer, Fabricator, and CM: Why Would You Want to Do That?

Arik Einhorn, PCB Technologies

Combing through the numerous channels discussing electronics in general and electronics manufacturing in particular, I came across so many articles or blogs on the subject of accelerating the process of NPI through proper communication management.

These writings describe the pains of customers around the world rising from a reluctant communication between the board designers (who are doing their best to accommodate both their customers’ wishes and the electrical design rules) and the board manufacturers (who are trying their best to produce the design they were given but also struggling with the constraints of manufacturing technology and physics.

In addition, as if this is not enough, down the road there will be communication between the board manufacturers and the contract manufacturers (CMs), who also struggle with their own technological constraints.

Some of the articles give guidelines and specific recipes for what to do and when to do it along the value chain to avoid multiple risks embedded in this three-phase process. All are seeking to minimize the occurrence and impact of these risks. None promise a risk-free solution. The question these articles are trying to answer is how to effectively manage the three entities’ communication. 

Understanding that the success of any new product would be predominantly a direct result of the ability to integrate these three phases in the process effectively, a better question would be, “Can we change this reality in a way that will eliminate the need for juggling between three separate entities?”

We are already challenging this reality and launching the new All-in-One concept. This means managing for our customers the entire NPI activity from board design through to PCBA, providing the customer with a single POC with a seamless process based on cutting-edge technologies and an exceptional “can-do” attitude. 

Under this concept, our value proposition starts with a board design that takes into consideration not only electrical design rules but also PCB manufacturing guidelines and PCB assembly and testing guidelines.

This concept relies on a unique operating structure—unified operations and engineering in which the evaluation of a new product is done simultaneously for all three phases based on an intercompany procedure that ensures all relevant aspects are implemented into the product.

This procedure relieves our customers of the need to coordinate between the three phases, improves the product’s attributes (e.g., testability, yield, quality, cost, etc.), and reduces the number of development cycles. The value our customers are getting is clear—being first to market with lower NRE costs.

An Interview With Arik Einhorn of PCB Technologies

Nolan Johnson, Managing Editor, SMT007 and PCB007 Magazines

Nolan Johnson: Arik, where in the market do you provide your products and services?

Arik Einhorn: In a nutshell, PCB Technologies was founded in 1981—almost 40 years ago—in Israel to provide the industry with PCBs. A few years after that, we added another service, which would be EMS. We started providing our customers with PCB assembly (PCBA), and then we completed extending our services to the integration of full systems or semi-systems. This is the way we have operated since then.

Two years ago, we were acquired by the largest private equity fund in Israel called FIMI. They put in place a new CEO, Mr. Oved Shapira, and he also brought me on board as a VP for business development. Our next step as upper-level management, along with our medium-level managers, was to establish a medium-term/long-term strategy, which we did. According to the market research we conducted, it appeared that the available market for us exceeds $1 billion annually, so with a $120 million revenue as a starting point, our strategy aims for significant growth within two or three years by organic and inorganic growth.

In addition to looking for companies that can complete our value to our customers (which we have already found several and bought them), we are also looking at broadening our services toward our customers. And we have found that with vertical integration, if we go back upstream in the value chain, board design would be something that our customers would like us to add. We have partnered with a very well-known, established board design company in Israel to provide an All-in-One solution, starting with board design, throughout production, and ending with full box build.

Johnson: Knowing where you’re going to fabricate and what the fabricator is capable of doing or not doing has a strong influence on what you might do with the design. It’s about tying that all together so that you have that continuous knowledge flow through a chain from design services into the fabrication and assembly of the board. There has to be a good niche for that in the industry.

Einhorn: Exactly. When we talk to our customers—and we always look at our customers as our center of doing—we understand that the competitive world they operate in demands a lot of their attention. We want to relieve them from the attention needed on the electronics production side, meaning we save them from the effort of collaborating, integrating, and synchronizing between the supply chain. We want them to be focused 100% on how to enlarge their business and grow their share in their market. It’s a win-win outcome. If they sell more, they buy more. And if they buy more, we sell more. That’s the end game of this idea.

And we understand that today’s market is not familiar with the All-in-One solution. Everyone is used to going for a board designer for the design, for a board manufacturer for the board manufacturing, and for the assembly to a contract manufacturer. We need to educate the market, or at least let them know that there is the possibility of worrying less and paying less attention to this side of the business, hence growing their attention to doing their business.Page 1 of 2

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