Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1398328
AUGUST 2021 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 23 together many times a year trying to refine these specs and update these specs to current manufacturing capa- bilities. Once a spec is pub- lished, the designer should be able to look into these specifications, understand them, and base their design layouts on these known capabilities. Matties: What is the role of the EMS in all of that? Vaughan: As an industry, we've defined long ago that we needed to overcommunicate, and we haven't done a great job of that. Our engi- neers at the EMS company usually interface directly with the OEM's engineers, and to a lesser degree, with whomever is responsible for the design activity. I'm not sure on this call we're going to solve how we make people better communicators. Kelly is spot on. It really is that simple. People who have been doing this for a long time want to build deep relationships. You want to have that, maybe not 24-hour access, but you need to have a point person on each side of that rela- tionship that is driven to pull all the answers together. All the standards in the world aren't going to define how all these one-off, really custom situations, are managed. In the end, it comes down to people and communication. Try as we may to force computers into that equation to be the workforce, it comes down to people wanting to be a part of the experience, being knowledgeable, and wanting to perform at a higher level in their respective goals. Matties: One of the things we just hear con- stantly, for the bare board fabricator in partic- ular, is they don't like to publish their capabili- ties for the world to see. ey hold them close to their chest, if you will. Are EMS companies more open about their capabilities? and they force the communi- cation. What's going to trig- ger this to change? Vaughan: One thing about change that holds some promise is the idea of a por- tal. Say it's a design portal, and if you have the capabil- ity while you're designing and the API hooks are there into distribution or the com- ponent supply chain where you can visually see the lead times and availability of the components that you're designing, you have that piece. If you're communicating with your printed circuit board fabricator then you can also do concurrent activities in and around material selections, stackups, and capability assess- ments. If you also have the EMS provider residing in the portal that's part of this system, then you have really increased visibility by vir- tue of doing the daily tasks and you're forced to interface and communicate. I hope that makes sense. I'm sure there's a couple of you who know what I'm talking about. Matties: It does, but again, this requires you to know who your provider will be up front. Are you moving that decision point down to the designer and out of the purchasing agent's hand? Dack: It's a chronic problem. is is where the realm of communication—the specs from man- ufacturing, or engineering, or the industry— come into play. ere is a block of information that for years has been sorted out, defined, and published in hopes of getting a lasso around manufacturing capability vs. design. e first point of communication, if we were to bullet list these things, would be design specification and a designer hanging their design on known design specifications and then trying to design around them. We have the industry coming John Vaughan