This is a very crucial step to ensure high quality output. Any misstep or incorrect use of materials, tools and measuring techniques will result with tremendous problems out in the field. Without a thorough understanding of what the unique and qualified process should be used for the PCBAs, potential problems will ensue.

Fundamentally, problems do not occur by itself, it is due to combination of design, materials or process. The root cause can be traced back to the process control and or lack of acceptance criteria with the suppliers and without a thorough assessment, problem will continue.

This is one of the critical areas where electronics industries are still focusing on mitigation whenever it is warranted. Seldom will OEM companies pay attention to this part when customers are still have open orders with them and they will wait for the last minutes to deal with the issues. One of the reasons for such cause is that they don’t have enough experts available to help them to see the solder-joint integrity issues.

Identify the critical strategies to ensure these specialized chip sets can meet the quality process control and can achieve high yield performance.

We would like to treat this on a separate services as the areas to cover are pretty wide and deep and based on our experience, OEM companies tend to close out the issues without in-depth analysis as they don’t see the evidence. Our goal is to provide “forensic” approach and uncover the areas of improvement or correction. Absence of evidence does not mean evidence is absent. We will investigate via DfSS technique.

For every manufacturing, design or materials made by a certain supplier, there needs to be a set of CTQ(Critical to Quality) highlighted or mandated. We will evaluate the process and steps and to help customers to define the CTQs adequately.

Most of the time, procurement team members are not necessarily technical persons and might lack the understanding of how the parts are being made by the suppliers and hence the acceptance criteria and often time it is being overlooked. We will interface with the suppliers on behalf of the customers and double check the acceptance criteria is being set accordingly with the suppliers.

When there is a field return, repair is eminent but frequently, suppliers apply the same production process to the repair process which dramatically increases the risk of losing the longevity of the PCBAs. We will assess and evaluate proper repair process to minimize the impact of the repair process.

Careful and prudent steps will be taken to scan the BOM contents and to ensure AOS (Assurance of Supply), regulatory requirements such as RoHS and REACH, POP65, etc., are being compliant and to also identify alternate sources to minimize the impact of parts shortages.

To maintain a healthy BOM, we will provide services to monitor substances controlled that are regulated by the industries and once we have identified the gaps or risks of non-compliant substances, we will make report or suggestions of mitigation to protect the best interests of the design. We will also create Technical Papers to support the reason why certain regulated substances are still needed for the design.

We provide DfR approach via DfSS concept and to ensure product design has a solid foundation to start with before they become a product. There is NPI approach or sustaining approach, each will utilize different concept and mitigation strategies.