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So Many Ways to Shoot Ourselves in the Feet, so Little Time

Yep, that’s what I’m talking about. When we ignore common sense, we can always come up with lame-brained ideas and wind up shooting ourselves in the foot.

One-hour quote times are possible, but practical and productive?

Let’s start with the one-hour quote time. Why? Why do you need a quote in an hour? I know you need the quote fast, pretty fast, in fact. But is a one-hour quote really necessary?

Let’s think about that. Do you need the quote in an hour because your end-product has to be shipped tomorrow night? Or was it because all the way down the line your own people messed up so badly that now you only have an hour left to place the order? What happened to all those best-laid plans of mice and men?  Certainly your designer had days to design that board and the original engineers had months to develop the product. What happened to all that time? What happened to all that fat you incorporated into the schedule, Mr. Program Manager? And now you only have an hour to get a quote back? It just doesn’t make any sense.

Now let’s talk about what you get with that one-hour quote. First of all, the board better not be too complicated. It better be made out of run-of-the-mill material and it better not have controlled impedance requirements. That’s right; controlled impedance can’t be calculated, verified and supported in less than an hour. It just can’t be done, and beware of anyone who tells you that he did check your impedance calculations. If you get your quote back in less than an hour, I’d say a big fat no to that possibility.

And of course, with the quote coming back in an hour there is no chance for your quoting  vendors to ask you any questions, if you even allow them asking any questions at all anyway, which you often don’t. So many of you hate that. You do not want to be questioned. “Just build it the way we designed it,” you say. “Sure, we have never been in a board shop. Sure we have no idea how a board is built, but that doesn’t matter, and we don’t have time for any questions. Just build it according to the data we sent you and if we get a board that doesn’t work using the data we provided, then of course it’ll still be your fault. We’ll still blame you anyway.”

Shortcuts always takes so much longer

How many times have we had this experience? All of us, with no exceptions. Whether we are talking about shipping the boards before the coupons have been read and approved, or counting on an order before it is finalized and telling your nosy boss that no news is good news, which in sales is the absolute dumbest thing ever said, we all know shortcuts don’t work. We have all shot ourselves in the proverbial foot at one time or another.

No let’s talk about the PCB shops

So, we’ve dinged our customers a little bit, but we certainly are not blameless. So, let’s talk about my friends, the PCB vendors, who are no strangers to foot-shooting.

In fact as a tribute to David Letterman, here is my list of the Top Ten things that that board shops say that leads to shooting themselves in the foot:

10. So what if it’s ITAR? They don’t really mean us; go get those inner layers from Mexico.

9. I don’t care how smart that guy is. It’s my shop and we’ll do it my way.

8. I don’t need that U.L. approval for every single laminate type, do I?

7. If we build it they will come.

6. I let my 55110 go. We don’t need that anymore and it costs too much anyway.

5. Don’t worry about this slump in business; it always comes back.

4. Nesting (putting more than one part number on a panel) is not productive.

3. Why should I do any marketing? Everybody knows who we are and what we do?

2. We’re no worse than anybody else.

And the Number One way that board shops shoot themselves in the foot, and my all-time favorite:

1. When your sales go down, fire the sales team and buy a new drill!

And one more thing: always under-promise and over-deliver. “I’m getting a new website. That will take care of any marketing I’ll have to do!”

So sometimes, it’s not always common sense, unless you learn from what you are doing wrong and are able to stop shooting yourself in the foot.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is only common sense.