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

Tips to Begin Applying to Your Designs:

 3. PCB Supplier Fabrication Date and PCB Supplier Logo Space

• Once your product takes off and you hit high-volume production, product tracing becomes critical. Place an empty copper box (or silkscreen/mask) into your pcb layout to reserve space for the fabricator to apply the date on which this bare board was produced. Any recalls or fallouts due to pcb quality can now be traced back to a specific date and batch. Include a note in your master drawing for the fabricator that points to this region. This text tells your fabricator to “apply the date here” in the artwork. The week and year numbers may provide sufficient details.

• Having more than one supplier for the same product always makes sense. This can combat any supply chain risk, prevent requalification time lags due to supply disruption, and give you some pricing leverage across suppliers. Supplier market share can also be adjusted based on their quality and performance. Therefore, designate a single space where each pcb supplier can place their logo so you immediately know from which supplier that customer return has come.

• Incidentally, logos and texts can be placed on electrical ground planes if design space is tight. The supplier can just as easily apply the logo or text as soldermask openings. So long as these openings are far from any critical high-speed traces, there should be no major impact on your signal integrity.  

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.