-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueShowing Some Constraint
A strong design constraint strategy carefully balances a wide range of electrical and manufacturing trade-offs. This month, we explore the key requirements, common challenges, and best practices behind building an effective constraint strategy.
All About That Route
Most designers favor manual routing, but today's interactive autorouters may be changing designers' minds by allowing users more direct control. In this issue, our expert contributors discuss a variety of manual and autorouting strategies.
Creating the Ideal Data Package
Why is it so difficult to create the ideal data package? Many of these simple errors can be alleviated by paying attention to detail—and knowing what issues to look out for. So, this month, our experts weigh in on the best practices for creating the ideal design data package for your design.
- Articles
- Columns
- Links
- Media kit
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
Assemblers Play the ‘Revise or Wait’ Game With Designers
June 22, 2022 | Nolan Johnson, I-Connect007Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Nolan Johnson recently spoke with Duane Benson at Milwaukee Electronics and Screaming Circuits. Duane was pointing out a trend in moving designs into production, which he termed “revise or wait.” This excerpt provides a preview of our exploration of similar topics involving supply chain issues, lead times, and proceeding forward despite the supply challenges.
Nolan Johnson: Duane, the idea of “revise or wait” is interesting. Tell me more.
Duane Benson: It really is. I keep going back to the old “build or buy” idea. See, there are people who say, “I can design that little module much better than someone else can.” But there are also submodules which nobody designs; almost nobody designs their own Bluetooth or Wi-Fi section of their circuit, for example. Instead, you buy a module. You have that decision, though: Are you going to build it, or are you going to buy it?
The “revise or wait” design methodology is very similar except, instead of gambling against your ability to design something better, you’re gambling against the supply chain. We’ve got vendors who are saying some components are out 52 weeks, and then they’re telling us they will be late even to that wait time. We can’t even ask about expedite fees until after those 52 weeks are over. So, what do you do?
Well, perhaps you’ve designed in one of these awesome new little power components that cut the size of your power supply in half; you don’t want to give that up. But is it worth it to wait an extra year before your design makes it to market? Sometimes the redesign will propagate off the board, throughout the system and all the way out to the packaging, but you must make that decision because a significant edge over your competition might be in the balance.
The fun part, of course, comes when the part manufacturer quotes you 52+ weeks, and you go ahead and spend a month redesigning a tiny little bit of the circuit, lay it out again, and get a couple of prototypes made—only to have the original manufacturer surprise you by saying, “Oh, by the way, we happened to get some fab capacity early. So, all those parts that we said you’d never ever be able to get? Here’s a bunch of them.”
That is absolutely the world we live in. Doesn’t matter if we like it or not, that’s where we are right now, and we must be willing to make those kinds of decisions. But trade-offs really are a big part of the stock-in-trade of the engineering world. "Revise or wait" is just another name for what we always do—create great things out of chaos.
I-Connect007 continues to cover industry topics and challenges. Subscribe to SMT007 Magazine, PCB007 Magazine and DESIGN007 Magazine to keep up with the industry conversations.
Suggested Items
Digital Twin Concept in Copper Electroplating Process Performance
07/11/2025 | Aga Franczak, Robrecht Belis, Elsyca N.V.PCB manufacturing involves transforming a design into a physical board while meeting specific requirements. Understanding these design specifications is crucial, as they directly impact the PCB's fabrication process, performance, and yield rate. One key design specification is copper thieving—the addition of “dummy” pads across the surface that are plated along with the features designed on the outer layers. The purpose of the process is to provide a uniform distribution of copper across the outer layers to make the plating current density and plating in the holes more uniform.
Meet the Author Podcast: Martyn Gaudion Unpacks the Secrets of High-Speed PCB Design
07/10/2025 | I-Connect007In this special Meet the Author episode of the On the Line with… podcast, Nolan Johnson sits down with Martyn Gaudion, signal integrity expert, managing director of Polar Instruments, and three-time author in I-Connect007’s popular The Printed Circuit Designer’s Guide to... series.
Showing Some Constraint: Design007 Magazine July 2025
07/10/2025 | I-Connect007 Editorial TeamA robust design constraint strategy balances dozens of electrical and manufacturing trade-offs. This month, we focus on design constraints—the requirements, challenges, and best practices for setting up the right constraint strategy.
The Shaughnessy Report: Showing Some Constraint
07/14/2025 | Andy Shaughnessy -- Column: The Shaughnessy ReportWhen we first decided to cover strategies for setting PCB design constraints, one designer we spoke with said, “They’re not really constraints; they’re more like guardrails that prevent your design from going off a cliff.”
Elementary, Mr. Watson: Rein in Your Design Constraints
07/10/2025 | John Watson -- Column: Elementary, Mr. WatsonI remember the long hours spent at the light table, carefully laying down black tape to shape each trace, cutting and aligning pads with surgical precision on sheets of Mylar. I often went home with nicks on my fingers from the X-Acto knives and bits of tape all over me. It was as much an art form as it was an engineering task—tactile and methodical, requiring the patience of a sculptor. A lot has changed in PCB design over the years.