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The first hard truth about AI in PCB fabrication is that you can buy software, but you cannot buy capability.
You can sign a contract, schedule demos, put a few logos on a slide, and tell your team you now have an AI strategy. Plenty of companies are doing some version of that right now. But if the people in your plant do not know how to use AI in real work, then your purchase was more akin to buying a gym membership and never going. (Don’t take that as criticism; it’s just how it works.)
In our industry, we have seen plenty of software promises, where we bought into systems that were supposed to make quoting easier, communication tighter, or production more predictable. Sometimes they helped, but sometimes they also created new work. I understand the skepticism, and I am not asking you to suspend that skepticism for AI.
I want to point you in the right direction, so instead of asking, "What AI package should we buy?" say, "How do we help the people in our plant become more capable with the tools that are already available to them?"
Over the coming months, I will walk you through this in a practical way. I’ll show you how to use AI in a real fab for a better RFQ review, cleaner shift handoffs, stronger CAPA drafts, clearer supplier comparisons, faster SOP cleanup, and better thinking when something starts going sideways in the process.
Remember, I'm learning, too. Even though I've spent a lot of time using and teaching AI in manufacturing environments, I still find new ways to get an edge every week. Those getting the most from AI are usually not the ones making the biggest claims. They are the ones using it daily, checking its work, and getting better.
The Moment Most Fabs Will Recognize
Picture a typical morning in a PCB shop. A customer package came in late yesterday. The print is not terrible, but it leaves enough ambiguity to create risk. One person in receiving is deciding whether the board really fits your standard capability window. Someone else is drafting clarification questions. Operations wants to know whether this job will become a hot lot in three days. Quality is already thinking ahead to what could go wrong if the requirements get interpreted differently by different people. Meanwhile, there's an open defect investigation from yesterday, a supplier email waiting on a response, a shift handoff note written too fast, and an operator instruction that everyone "knows" but nobody has cleaned up in writing.
To continue reading this article, which originally appeared in the May 2026 I-Connect007 Magazine, click here.
