Elementary Mr. Watson: Running the Signal Gauntlet
The Shaughnessy Report: Winning the Signal Integrity Battle
Connect the Dots: How to Avoid Five Common Causes of Board Failure
Mark Thompson: It’s All About Communication
March 13, 2016 | Barry Matties and Andy Shaughnessy, I-Connect007Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
Thompson: That's right, and what is it we always say? We sell time. If we've now lost that time, that's very difficult to recoup. On a good note though, well over 80% of our customers actually embrace our advice. When we get a design in and it's a one-, two- or three-day turn from customers that we deal with on a daily or weekly basis, they know all of the things that we would ask them ahead of time, and we get data that works right out of the gate, that's well within 10% right out of the gate. We have very few things to talk about and then just move on and get the product out.
Matties: Of all the jobs that come in, what percentage need attention, if you will, for design modification on a percentage basis?
Thompson: Maybe 10–15%, honestly. It's not a large number, so it's not that bad.
Shaughnessy: Would you say that it's mainly from new customers?
Thompson: Yes, Andy, that's a really good point. I would say that of that 10–15%, the vast majority are new customers who just don't know the way it works and the proper way to go about these things. Now, how does it get that way in this industry? Well, I can tell you that there are some big boys out there that offer design services that are included in everything. They take them by the hand and walk them through the entire process and literally tell them specifically, “This is where you will route this and route that.” We don't get into that kind of stuff. I get into design as it pertains to PCB fabrication. I don't actually specify and look at a board and say, “This is going to be a heat consideration issue. You're going to want to rotate that part 90 degrees and move it off about an inch.” I may think that, but I don't say that. I may look at a board and think, “This may benefit from some stitching. You've got some thermal issues or you may think about a Faraday cage for this particular device,” but I don't say that because again, we don't offer that design advice because it's a huge liability.
Matties: That's the other side of it, liability, because if you bring your advice in, they heed the advice and then if there's failure in the airbag or something, the liability can easily shift back to you. In this litigious society we're in and the traceability of errors, we're seeing penalties being forced on supply chain participants that you normally wouldn't see.
Thompson: I think much of that is because a lot of shops are attempting to stretch when they shouldn't. We want to tell you, “This is what we can do and these are our limitations, but we can make the product work for you.”
Shaughnessy: That's good, and it comes back to communication, so you don't overpromise.
Thompson: That's another thing you see a lot of these days, overpromising. That's a bad situation to get into. Ultimately, we get a lot of people who have been overpromised to, and a lot of times those customers come right back to us.
Matties: Is there anything that we've not talked about that we should be sharing with the readers?
Thompson: From a personal standpoint, I have some columns coming up that I'm going to be submitting to The PCB Design Magazine, which hopefully will be of some use.
Matties: Those are always well received, for sure.
Thompson: That's excellent. I remember I happened to be standing next to Dave Ryder some years ago when, Barry, you walked up and asked if there was anybody in our company that could do any technical writing. Dave turned around and stared at me. We've taken it from there and it's been phenomenal. Now I've had more work, so I've had less time to be able to do those columns and that's unfortunate, but I just want to let you know that I'm coming back and you'll be seeing a lot of stuff from us.
Matties: Good. We welcome that. Thank you for your time today, Mark.
Thompson: Thank you.
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