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The Shaughnessy Report: Watch Out for Cost Adders

I’ve owned a few snakes in my lifetime. In my high school biology class, for example, I took care of our black rat snake for a few weeks. He escaped once, which they all eventually do, and climbed up inside our furnace. My next snake was a nine-foot yellow-tailed python. He suffered an ignominious end when he was killed by the giant rat who was supposed to be his dinner. In my 20s, I had a hognose snake that also escaped, and I never did find him.

Snakes can be tricky, as you can see. This month we focus on one serpent that bedevils PCB designers and design engineers: the cost adder.

Because approximately 70% of the manufacturing costs of a product are determined in the design cycle, every decision a designer makes has some effect—good or bad—on the manufacturing cost, as well as the cost of the final product.

Fortunately, cost adders can be kept at bay: Designers can employ hundreds of tips, tricks, and techniques to keep costs down.

In this month’s issue of Design007 Magazine, our expert contributors explain the impact of cost drivers on PCB designs and the need to consider a design budget. They discuss the myriad design cycle cost adders—hidden and not so hidden—and ways to add value. When every decision has ramifications downstream, the more you know, the better.

We start off this magazine with Jen Kolar’s article on common design errors, especially DFM miscues, that can have a bigger impact on cost than you might think. Cherie Litson details areas where she often discovers cost adders hiding, and which teams seem to be constant targets of these troublemakers. Columnist Martyn Gaudion offers “commonsense” tips for adding value to the design cycle. Kelly Dack provides “anti-venom” for PCB design cost adders, and he points out some of the dens where cost adders often lurk, waiting to drive up your manufacturing costs. Michael Marshall has a paper on design cost drivers, which covers dozens of ways designers can add cost into the design cycle, often without realizing it. Rounding out our features is a column by Istvan Novak on the evolution of PCB design costs.

We also have columns by Matt Stevenson and Joe Fjelstad, and articles by Dan Beeker, Erik Pedersen and Richard Koensgen, and Anaya Vardya, as well as an excerpt from Anaya's brand-new book, The Printed Circuit Designer's Guide to DFM Essentials.

I hope you’re having a relaxing summer. You’ve earned a vacation.

This column originally appears in the August 2024 Issue of Design007 Magazine.