And of course when anything goes wrong - (and this is not new - it has been my experience over the last 30 years) you have a finger pointing game between the suppliers which generally consist of: The solder manufacturer The contract manufacturer The PCB house The designer The solder manufacturer will point at the CM profile as a first strike and then at the board manufacturer as a backup. The board manufacturer will point at the solder manufacturer and the CM profile as a dual first strike. The CM will point at the board, the solder and (sometimes) the design. The designer will point to a dozen other assemblies with the same footprints that do not have the problem. A good business to be in would be an independent FA lab.......... John Burke (408) 515 4992 -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gregg Owens Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 9:00 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [TN] Contract PCB Design Services T&C Pete: Your "rant" could easily be extended to every area of PCBA manufacturing. The rise of PCBA assemblies houses in the 1980s are examples of how management has tried to save upfront costs only to pay more in the end with longer lead times. This is not to say assembly houses are "bad" but it transferred the electronics manufacturing process away from the very people who would be installing and using the PCBAs - the end users. This business model has created lots more finger pointing between end users and the board and assembly houses because the end users no longer retain the experience necessary to clearly determine whether the root cause of a problem is design or process related. Then this century throw in lead-free and you end up with lots of folks working very hard in this industry but with all too great ignorance of the materials and processes they are using, all the while trying to keep quarterly profits in a positive position. I will now get off my soap box. Gregg Owens Technical Writer - Avionics Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (310) 363-6533 -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Pete Houwen Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 7:19 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [TN] Contract PCB Design Services T&C Bob, I'm in a rather similar situation. A company of 3000+, R&D locations on 3 continents and 2 islands. I am the sole remaining PCB designer. To answer your questions first: 1. We have a set of company specific design standards, mostly to make sure the data we receive is compatible with MRP and CAM standards, and it makes it easier for me to pick up the "finished" job and, well, finish it. But we don't keep a standard agreement, as the services we require change based on the design. 2. If a company can not deliver what we have asked for, either during or at the end, they don't get paid. In a situation such as yours, a mutual agreement to terminate the effort, we would pay them for the part of the work we can use, whatever did meet parts of the agreement. This has happened before. now the rant: We laid off all the designers but me. We send the work to China, using engineers with no PCB experience whatsoever, to do design and documentation. Their cost is 1/3 of ours. It takes them 3x as long to deliver a design. Between the time I spend getting them started and correcting after, I spend 1.5x what it would take to do the design myself. To Sr. management, this is cost savings. Lately, we have been contacting one of the designers we laid off. We pay him almost what it cost when he was employed here. And again, add in my time, so we're about even now. That works well, except that he has another full time job, so turn time is longer. And since I am stretched so thin, there have been errors - costly errors, and reduced manufacturability. Here's hoping the new "Undercover Boss" TV series starts opening some eyes. 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For more information please contact helpdesk at x2960 or [log in to unmask] ______________________________________________________________________ --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ----------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please contact helpdesk at x2960 or [log in to unmask] ______________________________________________________________________ --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 -----------------------------------------------------