Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1398328
AUGUST 2021 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 27 supply chain to be detailed. But doesn't that let out their secrets? Vaughan: You're right on point with that. In the environments that are being proposed by at least two of the top design offerings right now, you're electing to be a participant in their plat- form if you're a fabricator. In our case at Sum- mit, you're electing to be in that platform, and there are absolutely criteria and protocol for being a participant in that platform. All the attributes that you just underscored are abso- lutely required and would be part of that plat- form. e difference is all that would be under your contractual relationship and under a broader non-disclosure agreement as opposed to just publishing it on the internet for all to see. It would be on the design side. On the design side there's a subset of par- ticipants and for the fabricator there's a very defined listing of who those fabricators are. It's the same thing on the EMS side of the equa- tion. You're exactly right, Nolan, that the part of being involved in that alignment is you have to be willing to share and document what all that looks like inside of your environment so that people can make the right decisions. Shaughnessy: Kelly, a couple of years ago you said, only half-jokingly, that you were the "designer whisperer" between design and assembly because you spoke both languages. What are the biggest misconceptions that designers have about assembly and vice versa? What about the assembly guys about design? Dack: at's a good question. e job is to reach out to designers, and it couples with another gig I have as a trainer and instructor of design curriculum from IPC. e idea is to reach out to designers to bring them the information that we only wish the assemblers and suppliers would bring to the designer. Our intent is to fill in the gaps of knowledge and experience with "gotchas" over years and years. at's what these curricula are based upon. ey fill in the blanks of what suppliers need from design- ers and what designers need from suppliers. It starts with the concept of bringing all stake- holders together at the beginning of a project. If you could get a big table and sit everybody down and let everybody express their require- ments and capabilities, you would end up with a more successful project. Johnson: Does that actually happen in real life? Dack: Absolutely. It depends on how progres- sive your company is. Right now, I've got to say, I'm very happy with the increasing stake- holder consciousness. e term stakeholder is used at the company I work for now, and it is so nice to be just down the hall from five differ- ent assembly lines. I wish I were a little more in touch with—and I'm sure I will be—our suppliers for bare boards. I have a stakeholder in the company here who is in direct contact daily with the bare board suppliers and who does a good job of conveying the information. I'm very excited about that. Johnson: What I'm hearing is that you've got somebody on your team who's responsible for all the communications to a particular part of the manufacturing chain—the fabricators, the EMS suppliers, components, or whatever. You have a champion, somebody whose job it is to be that communication to all of your potential people in your supply chain. Dack: Yes. I don't think it's officially responsible by title, but it's by company culture. Johnson: I could see that vendor relationship as a place where cross-functional teams break down. When you're trying to put a represen- tative from every company together and have that conversation, that gets tricky. It's hard to hold a cadre of companies together. But if you have a champion inside your company that is responsible for those relationships and that communication, you can work with your