Some Wisdom from Designing for a High-Volume Production OEM – Part 1

Tips to Begin Applying to Your Designs:

1. Panelising your Artwork

• If you plan to produce at higher volumes, you must ‘know your production panel’, even if that panel is to be assembled by a contractor. Work with your contractor to get the assembly price down. Investigate their preferred panel width. Reducing machine downtime due to production rail-width adjustments and recalibrations is a significant production cost factor.

• True high-volume producers are standardising their panel widths such that they start assembling the next product even before the previous product has left the placement machine. This is known as asynchronous mode and is possible for Siemens, Fujitsu, and other placement equipment. These machines are like F1 racing cars, and you must keep them moving to stay ahead of the competition with minimal downtime in the pit, performing changeovers.

• The sizing of your bare board pcb is also critical to your bare board cost. The pcb is typically the component of highest cost in your BOM except for advanced chips. The formula for pcb price versus pcb size is a non-linear equation. Small increments in pcb size can sometimes cost zero dollars, but often, they can cost double-digit percentage price increases. Understanding how the production panel size and the fabricator’s working panel size fit together is critical to understanding your bare board costs. This topic is a whole article on its own. The key to controlling your panel costs is understanding both your assembler’s AND your fabricator’s requirements. One approach is to fix the panel width for the best production cost but adjust the panel length to improve the material price.

• Control your panel’s narrative! Now that you have created your panel artwork, you should also add information about the position of each pcb within that panel. How better is it to determine if you have a systematic problem? With this feature, you can diagnose, “This issue always arises on the component in the bottom-left corner of the panel; there must be a systematic flaw in the production, not the component...”.

• Also, ensure adequate tooling, fiducials, and other aids are present by providing them in your artwork. Adding appropriate tolerances to your master drawings will ensure the best results.

This is just one of a selection of experience-based pointers. Follow the links below for more:

Some Wisdom from Designing for a High-Volume Production OEM – Part 1

Some Wisdom from Designing for a High-Volume Production OEM – Part 2

Some Wisdom from Designing for a High-Volume Production OEM – Part 3

Some Wisdom from Designing for a High-Volume Production OEM – Part 4

If you have any questions or points to make on these topics, post a reply in the comments section below.