AUGUST 2019 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 65
small- and mid-sized electronics manufactur-
ers, understanding that enterprises relying on
high-volume, commoditized boards for mass
production are a different animal. For these
larger enterprises, there are opportunities to
renegotiate overseas supplier contracts or even
influence where their suppliers buy raw mate-
rials.
Smaller organizations needing a lower vol-
ume of PCBs face greater relative risk to the
bottom line. The added cost and uncertainty
associated with international trade can help
make domestic manufacturing more appeal-
ing. We understand that even PCBs made in
the U.S. will likely have raw materials from
China but producing boards here does not
present risk like a move to Vietnam or China.
Moving PCBs to be made in America offers
multiple advantages. You can eliminate the
risk associated with uneven quality, delays
common with transatlantic shipping, and risks
to your intellectual property. We also encour-
age our customers to look for hidden costs of
offshoring and seriously consider its less quan-
tifiable pain points, like the impact on inven-
tory management and burden on the domestic
operation.
The longer tariffs remain in place, the more
likely cost-benefit analysis tips in favor of U.S.-
produced PCBs. Uncertain trade policy causes
us to closely examine our hidden assumptions
about offshoring paradigms. You might find
that a domestic manufacturer that specializes
in low-volume, high-mix manufacturing pro-
vides a viable alternative to increasingly costly
and risky Chinese production.
DESIGN007
References
1. K. Alaganan and V. Argod, "Supply Chain Strategies to
Minimize the Impact of Tariffs," Chainanalytics, May 14,
2019.
2. K. Russ, "The Costs of Tariffs in the U.S.-China Trade
War," Econofact, May 14, 2019.
3. M. Buetow, "Pending U.S. Tariffs to Affect Host of PCB
Equipment, Components," Circuits Assembly, June 15,
2018.
4. B. Casselman, "Trade War Starts Changing Manu-
facturers in Hard-to-Reverse Ways,"
The New York Times,
May 30, 2019.
5. www.bain.com
6. www.ipc.org
7. IPC, "Electronics Industry Says Trump Administration
Tariffs on China Could Harm U.S. Electronics Companies,"
May 11, 2018.
8. Reuters, "U.S. Firms: China Tariffs Will Raise Costs
With Few Sourcing Alternatives" Voice of America News,
June 17, 2019.
9. N. Dimitrijevic, "Manufacturing: China vs. Vietnam
(Pros and Cons)," LinkedIn, March 19, 2018.
10. "The Case for PCBs Made in America: Why Domes-
tic Prototyping and Manufacturing Delivers Competitive
Advantage," Sunstone Circuits.
Bob Tise is an engineer at Sunstone
Circuits. To read past columns or
contact, click here.
The robotic arm on NASA's Mars 2020 rover can curl heavy
weights with the best. The rover's 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-
long) arm handily maneuvers 88 pounds' (40 kilograms')
worth of sensor-laden turret as it moves from a deployed to
a stowed configuration.
On Mars, the arm and turret will work together, allowing
the rover to work as a human geologist would: by reaching
out to interesting geologic features, abrading, analyzing
and even collecting them for further study via Mars 2020's
Sample Caching System, which will collect samples of Mar-
tian rock and soil.
"Standing there, watching the arm and turret go through
their motions, you can't help but marvel that the rover will
be in space in less than a year from now and performing
these exact movements on Mars in less than two," said Dave
Levine, integration engineer for Mars 2020.
Mars 2020 will launch in July 2020. It will land at Jezero
Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. (Source: NASA)
NASA's Mars 2020 Rover Does Biceps Curls
