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

Tips to Begin Applying to Your Designs:

 2. Change Release and PCB Revision Control

• The first fundamental building block for a controlled environment is to directly number your pcb as text in your artwork, including a separate number for revision control. If you plan to be in business for a long time, expect incremental improvements, customer variants, or complete redesigns. Years later, you should be able to pick up a pcba and recognize, “This is PCB 248xxx rev01, not 246xxx-02”. The softcopy filename you stored for this design should match identically, making it more efficient to search using this number.

• As for your numbering system, the first few digits can hold some meaning. For example, ‘24’ for the year the project originated, followed by ‘8’ for an 8-layer board. You can now apply some basic indexing to the remaining digits.

• If you plan to grow your business large or are currently doing so, be careful with the above method. It will become quite costly and time-consuming in the future to re-adjust your entire logistics database to accept a new numbering system when you run out of 3-digit or 4-digit combos.  

This is just one of a selection of 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.