Navigating the Global Materials Supply Chain: A Roundtable Discussion

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes

Keuthen: One of best ways to get a solution, obviously, came from the OEM and thank you for that. Because if we want it standardized and to have a product implemented that we have on board and perhaps subsidize other products that we don't need, it is actually the best way to get into the design phase very early with a customer, to think about what kind of materials we want to use setting up this PCB. If everybody would be that open to discussion on that in the early phase and get the supply chain involved in this during the early phase, it would be probably easier to get back to more standardized usage of material. The functionality of the board would be the same because you get the consulting activities from the PCB manufacturer who in the end knows, "Okay. For the prototypes this is how you do it. But in the end, how is this industrialized?“

That's the major issue that we've got. It's not building a prototype. It is in the end having a reliable industrialized production which we need to focus on.

Willis: At least one other point that's worth keeping in mind, and I think that the industry is doing that to a certain extent, is that original material manufacturers sell to the PCB manufacturer. However, they should sell to the designer instead.

The designer is comfortable and has an understanding. The classic case was DuPont. They always sold to the designer. Then perhaps the PCB manufacturer kind of suffered a little bit because it's been specified in before he was aware of it. I think from a commercial point of view, that's a good thing. Talking about NPL, we are very keen to do testing, evaluation, and understanding the problems. We've done massive work on CAF and CAF testing, trying to generate new techniques to measure susceptibility for CAF with different materials. That's just been really, really interesting.

Another project we did is looking at moisture ingress and the reality of how you get it out, whether you ever get it out and to the degree to which you get it out. Some of the work was done by a colleague of mine. You step back and you think it makes sense, but we just didn't appreciate it until somebody does this science. Anything we do now is all about science. Whether it's materials, chemistry, and obviously design aspects for components.

Pattie: I think when you get on the designers, sometimes there's a real silo mentality of just really thinking about what their needs are and not how it spreads out to everyone else. When we really started our OEM program, we call it an OEM marketing program, but it's also an OEM educational program. We really have to work with all our designers to understand all these implications. Having to be able to connect all three is very important. We also have a very competitive business, so it's not always that everybody works as well together as they often should.

Willis: I think there's also one other group that we probably sometimes perhaps don't like, not me personally, but certainly some: purchasing. A zillion years ago we used to do some training courses for purchasing people from very large companies. I was extremely surprised at how little they knew about the product they were purchasing.

True, they can't know everything they're buying, unless they're a very big company and they specialize in PCB fab or components, because they're buying loads of different stuff. However, there are a lot of companies that are bad at specification, so how can a purchasing guy compare two products if he hasn't got a good specification to start off with?

Pattie: I'll tell you one area that's a very serious problem right now—the metal core PCB business. There are no IPC specs for this. It's kind of the wild, wild West. There's so much misinterpretation in, what I would even say, is maybe over-purchasing. Purchasing a product that is way over specified that you don't need that type of product, because they don't understand what they're buying. We see that a lot.

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