Book Excerpt: 'The Printed Circuit Designer's Guide to... Manufacturing Driven Design,' Chapter 2

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Excerpt from: The Printed Circuit Designer's Guide to... Manufacturing Driven Design, Chapter 2: Why a Change is Needed

Contemporary Complexity
In a recent survey on the increasing complexity of electronics design, it was reported that 68% of companies were facing increasing pressure to miniaturize their electronics form factors. This report mirrors global trends seen within the industry. It represents an increased burden placed upon the printed circuit board designer to put more functionality into a smaller space, and on the manufacturer to produce with a smaller margin of error.

This report highlights the interconnectedness of these complexity trends. The study also showed 68% of respondents are facing increasing pressure to bring the cost of their electronic products down, with 75% acknowledging the increasing challenge these factors brought to the manufacturing process. In line with quality initiatives, 74% identified the pressure on reliability of the products to also be increasing.

One of the questions I ask virtually every designer is, “How often do you get Technical Queries (TQs) from your suppliers related to a design you sent them?” I find the answer is almost always between 50% and 100% of the time. The good news is that most fabrication and contract manufacturing partners likely have a DFM software solution in place to validate designs before they are committed to manufacturing.The downside is your organization is dependent upon them to look out for your interests, and this typically adds a one- to two-week delay from submission before you even begin receiving TQs from them.

Such communication is often iterative and reported to be the single largest bottleneck encounter between design and manufacturing. There are times when the fabricators find it necessary to make radical changes, which requires extensive communication, adding yet another dimension to the TQ recipient. If it is the subject matter expert for the design, then the TQ is frequently mitigated for that design, meaning that same occurrence will likely occur yet again on other designs. Manufacturing experts need to be involved in addressing the occurrence of the TQ to reduce the likelihood of the reoccurrence.

Your supplier is naturally limited in their ability to perform this DFM. They don’t know what a board does and have no context for the design decisions that went into creating that function. Manufacturers naturally lack the design intent driven by your organization and, as such, may not be able to catch every issue within a design. As a general rule, manufacturers build to print. They are responsible for realizing the design given, not ensuring that the design works as intended.

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