What Is Outsourcing Electronics Manufacturing for PCB?
By:PCBBUY 04/28/2022 10:26

If you own a company that produces or manufactures a product using electronics, outsourcing some of your electronics product’s components can be a dream come true or your worst nightmare – depending on the choice you make. If you outsource printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs) and you choose the wrong contract manufacturer (CM), you could ship a product that doesn’t work at all or that works sporadically or incorrectly, ruining your reputation, failing to comply with industry standards.
Do you know the knowledge of PCB outsourcing electronics? In this passage, we are providing all the information about PCB outsourcing electronics, please check and read the content below for more professional information.
Why we process PCB outsourcing manufacturing?
Lower investment
Surface mount machines and quality inspection machines are a massive up-front investment. So are the costs in getting certified to manufacture PCBs (printed circuit boards) for aerospace and medical projects. And don’t forget that the new hires you’ll surely need will cost you in:
· Permanent, year-round salaries
· Health insurance
· Retirement packages
With outsourced PCB assembly, you worry about none of that. Keep your operation small, and only worry about your current employees.
Facility savings
Renting or leasing warehouse space can really drain your funds, not to mention if you have to pay property taxes. That's why your electronics vendor can hold your parts in-house. You don’t have to find space for all that inventory. Your PCB manufacturer will take on the financial burden until the parts are shipped out.
This cost reduction lets you invest somewhere else in your facility -- R&D, marketing, you name it.
Cost efficiency
Your electronic manufacturing services provider should already have in place an established infrastructure and well-rehearsed operation. Why spend years attempting your own? A PCB fabrication expert will already understand the inventory management factors that affect cost efficiency, such as:
· Short part life cycles
· Price fluctuations
· Design changes
Especially if you’re a startup with little capital, it’s easier to enlist experienced and well-run circuit board assembly services instead of trying to consolidate the process yourself.
What are the key factors of PCB outsourcing?
Even if you have in-house designers, a close look into outsourcing PCB design is definitely warranted if you want to improve time-to-market, product quality and reliability, flexibility, customer satisfaction, or the bottom line.
To be clear, PCB design represents the conversion of electronic schematic diagrams into sets of data that are then used to create fully developed, manufactured, assembled, tested, and qualified printed circuit boards. This PCB design process is also known as PCB layout.
Two key elements must be considered in any improvement – PCB design capacity and PCB design capability:
PCB design capacity
Resources: Are you getting the most out of your in-house electronic design talent? Some companies use an electronics design engineer (one who engineers the electronic design and creates the schematic) to also create the PCB design.
By subcontracting the PCB design to a qualified PCB design firm, you can free the electronic design engineer to focus purely on electronic design. By making this change, you will significantly increase the capacity of new product development at your company.
Growth: Is your organization in a growth phase? Do you plan on entering one soon? During a growth phase, companies will hire more PCB design talent to meet the demand. Unfortunately, PCB design talent is then dismissed after the growth phase hit a plateau. This is disruptive to an organization and to design professionals.
By using a PCB design firm, you will increase your company’s flexibility during periods of growth and reduce involuntary employee turnover. By developing a solid partnership with a qualified PCB design firm, you will always have ready and reliable PCB design resources when you need them.
Transitions: Change is constant. Some companies move from one design software tool to another; at times driven by PCB design staff/engineering leadership changes. Companies also merge. In these cases, previous PCB designs need to be transitioned to a new common PCB design software tool. Different iterations of PCB design software tools and library data/structures can also exist within a company; in many cases the format and control is questionable. A qualified PCB design firm can help you to close these gaps and will enable your PCB design system to create better products, faster.
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