Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1276973
32 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2020 Matties: Do you consider that a marketing or cost-of-sales expense on your P&L? Is it attrib- uted to your sales costs, or do you attribute it to engineering? Thompson: It's attributed to engineering. Matties: It seems to me that it should be attrib- uted to cost-of-sales because that's all pre- sale. You may be an engineer, but you're in the selling process when you're doing that. And if you're in the selling process, maybe you should get a sales commission. Thompson: Our sales manager has always said that I'm one of his best salespeople, although I'm not an official salesperson. Holden: It's too bad that most fabricators can't get away with charging non-referring engineer- ing (NRE). Matties: We've framed this conversation around fab notes, but there are also the fab notes for assemblers that we haven't even really talked about. This is just on the bare board side. And if it's this bad on bare boards, it has to be kind of rough for the assemblers too. Thompson: Oh, gosh, yes. We have assemblers we'll send data check logs, and we'll have no less than five or six reCAMs based on small nuances that they want to make. They'll say, "Can you move the fiducials 0.5 mils in this direction? Can you make the rails this size? Can you change this to a score tab instead of a breakaway tab?" All these different things that should have been negoti- ated from the begin- ning and came in through sales as a complete package with an assembly drawing or a sub- panel drawing. Some of them refuse to produce sub-panel drawings for that very reason; they reserve the right to be able to come back and say, "Our nebulizer bit needs at least two inches before I can start to pinch these tabs off." Over the years, we've understood those requirements, and we put together what's called a CSR database—or customer special require- ments database—that has all the hot buttons for all 5,000 customers of ours. If they say they need a specific shipping method, if they have a specific assembly method, they have a specific panelization method, it is understood. And all of the departments are required to look at their section in the CSR database and to be able to conform to that. Shaughnessy: Is there a standard for fab notes? That's one of the things we heard from pre- vious conversations is that there really is no standard. Designers create the fab drawings the way they want to do them. Thompson: Ultimately, I gave one customer 10 different scenarios of how to panelize things— nesting, 180-degree rotations, various break- away tab strategies, the size of perforations and tabs along with the size and location of score lines. Because some people want the scoreline inboard, and some people want them outboard. Having them outboard means that they have nubs that they're going to have to trim off after assembly, and a lot of folks don't want to have to do that either. It becomes quite cumbersome.