Mirka, We use Contract Manufacturers exclusively for all of our PWAs. Some things you can consider : 1. Understand your P/O on what the acceptance criteria is. If a PWA fails to perform a defined acceptance criteria, then we don't pay for it and the CM owns the scrap. We do assist them in debugging to make it acceptable, but that is our agreement on any discrepant material. We don't tend to tell our CM how to do their job, but we do hold them accountable to performance criteria. 2. We reserve the right to perform a supplier survey on any PWB supplier our CM might want us to consider, and can approve or disapprove at any time. We generally try to use the CMs suppliers as we tend to get better pricing, but we monitor all failures and if a PWB supplier is not measuring up, we can disqualify them from our products. We do supplier surveys on both our CM and any of their suppliers if we think it is necessary. Substandard performance or recurring errors will initiate a supplier survey pretty quickly. 3. Track your performance and RCA-CA process with the supplier. Initiate weekly/monthly, quarterly or by lot performance reviews with your supplier. Failure data and CA has a way of telling you whether something is acceptable to you and if your supplier is measuring up. If they aren't, then you identify the CA needed to meet your requirements and if that is not done, you really need to consider taking your business to another supplier that will measure up to your requirements. That in a nutshell is our general philosophy with CM's. We state our requirements and work with them to support their efforts. We review failures and work together to improve. We also invite our key suppliers to participate in our DFM/DFT reviews for new designs. It really helps to have their input and preferences during the design phase, and usually saves us some money with the assembly pricing because we line up with their processes and efficiencies. If your CM is interested in keeping you as a customer, it works out pretty well. At least is does for us. Good Luck......DT At 04:16 PM 7/17/00 -0400, you wrote: >Hello Technetters, > I changed jobs recently . In my previous position we >assembled all our boards at house. We received the finished boards from >board house and did >QA on all boards received, which sometimes uncovered problems. >In the new company the boards are ordered by the assembly house. >I questioned the assembly house about the QA of the boards, and it seems >like they just look >at the boards. I am not very happy with this situation... >According to the IPC specs the board house should inspect the boards, >but from my >previous job I know, that sometimes their inspection may not be >sufficient. >Could you let me know what is your experience and how do you handle >this situation. > >Thanks a lot >Mirka > > > >-- >| Mirka Halas TSI TelSys Incorporated | >| Senior PCB Designer 7100 Columbia Gateway Dr. | >| [log in to unmask] Columbia, Maryland 21046 | >| http://www.tsi-telsys.com (410) 872-3900: Main | >| (410) 872-3922: Direct (410) 872-3901: FAX | > -=+=-*********************************************************-=+=- > >############################################################## >TechNet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8c >############################################################## >To subscribe/unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with >following text in >the body: >To subscribe: SUBSCRIBE TECHNET <your full name> >To unsubscribe: SIGNOFF TECHNET >############################################################## >Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional >information. >If you need assistance - contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or >847-509-9700 ext.5315 >############################################################## ############################################################## TechNet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8c ############################################################## To subscribe/unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the body: To subscribe: SUBSCRIBE TECHNET <your full name> To unsubscribe: SIGNOFF TECHNET ############################################################## Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information. If you need assistance - contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ##############################################################