-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueSignal Integrity
If you don’t have signal integrity problems now, you will eventually. This month, our expert contributors share a variety of SI techniques that can help designers avoid ground bounce, crosstalk, parasitic issues, and much more.
Proper Floor Planning
Floor planning decisions can make or break performance, manufacturability, and timelines. This month’s contributors weigh in with their best practices for proper floor planning and specific strategies to get it right.
Showing Some Constraint
A strong design constraint strategy carefully balances a wide range of electrical and manufacturing trade-offs. This month, we explore the key requirements, common challenges, and best practices behind building an effective constraint strategy.
- Articles
- Columns
- Links
- Media kit
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
Do You Collaborate With Your Component Supplier?
July 15, 2024 | Andy Shaughnessy, Design007 MagazineEstimated reading time: 2 minutes

Mention the word “collaboration” to a group of designers, and a few of them might acknowledge working closely with their fab and assembly partners. But how many designers consider their component providers to be true stakeholders in the process and collaborate with them regularly?
Duane Benson, founder of Positive Edge, has a long history of working on the component side of things. I asked Duane to weigh in with his thoughts on collaborating with component suppliers.
Andy Shaughnessy: We hear a lot of talk about the need for designers to collaborate with their fab and assembly partners, but component providers seem to be left out of the mix. Do you think component providers are also “stakeholders” in this process?
Duane Benson: Component suppliers are absolutely stakeholders in the design process. The supply chain isn't in as bad shape as it was a few years ago, but there is still too much variability to take it for granted. It's not uncommon to have easy availability for prototype quantities but limited availability for production quantities, or one package may be in good supply, but the one you want, not so much. Good supply chain partners can keep you from designing with unavailable parts, and they can help you find subs.
Shaughnessy: What does true collaboration look like between design, fab, assembly, and component provider?
Benson: In true collaboration, early BOMs are cleared with the supply chain, and are re-cleared at intervals throughout the design process—and not just for exotic parts. Sometimes passives and other common parts have issues too. Supply chain may also know about new and upcoming parts that could simplify a design. Fab and assembly should be used from the start for ground rules. Complex footprints or packages must be run past both fab and assembly for layout and manufacturing considerations.
Shaughnessy: After the supply chain snafu a few years back, it seems like a no-brainer to keep your component supplier in the loop. Do you think designers are communicating more now with the component folks?
Benson: Not really. Even during the worst of the troubles, engineers would often pick components without thought to availability. A tweak or redesign based on availability was too often a last resort and probably still is. The draw of a hot new MCU or such always seems to override the fact that more than prototype quantities are a year away.
To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the June 2024 issue of Design007 Magazine, click here.
Testimonial
"The I-Connect007 team is outstanding—kind, responsive, and a true marketing partner. Their design team created fresh, eye-catching ads, and their editorial support polished our content to let our brand shine. Thank you all! "
Sweeney Ng - CEE PCBSuggested Items
Cybord Announces Air-Gapped Visual AI Platform for Electronics Integrity and Hardware Cybersecurity
09/17/2025 | PRNewswireCybord, a leading provider of advanced visual-AI electronic component analytics solutions, announced the launch of its fully air-gapped platform, bringing advanced Visual AI inspection and traceability capabilities fully on-premises.
Knocking Down the Bone Pile: Best Practices for Electronic Component Salvaging
09/17/2025 | Nash Bell -- Column: Knocking Down the Bone PileElectronic component salvaging is the practice of recovering high-value devices from PCBs taken from obsolete or superseded electronic products. These components can be reused in new assemblies, reducing dependence on newly purchased parts that may be costly or subject to long lead times.
ICAPE Group Unveils Exclusive Report on Sustainability in Electronics Manufacturing
09/15/2025 | ICAPE GroupICAPE Group, a global leader in printed circuit boards (PCBs) and custom electronics manufacturing, today announces the launch of its 2025 Industry Outlook & Innovation Report: Sustainability in Electronics Manufacturing. This exclusive report is accompanied by fresh insights from a dedicated Statista survey of 100 electronics manufacturing professionals, commissioned by ICAPE Group.
Advanced Packaging-to-Board-Level Integration: Needs and Challenges
09/15/2025 | Devan Iyer and Matt Kelly, Global Electronics AssociationHPC data center markets now demand components with the highest processing and communication rates (low latencies and high bandwidth, often both simultaneously) and highest capacities with extreme requirements for advanced packaging solutions at both the component level and system level. Insatiable demands have been projected for heterogeneous compute, memory, storage, and data communications. Interconnect has become one of the most important pillars of compute for these systems.
Advanced Packaging: Preparation is Now
09/15/2025 | Nolan Johnson, I-Connect007In this interview, Matt Kelly, CTO for the Global Electronics Association, and Devan Iyer, chief strategist of advanced packaging, define advanced electronics packaging and the critical nature of getting it right in the electronics manufacturing field. They share details from their white paper, “Advanced Packaging to Board Level Integration—Needs and Challenges,” and provide insight into how next-generation packaging will change the design, fabrication, and assembly of printed circuit boards, including the implications for final system assembly.