Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1509873
OCTOBER 2023 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 39 that all the basic points of the printed circuit board's dimensions, thicknesses, layers, type of solder mask, and so on, have been well defined in the Gerber files. If that's not the case—and it is oen not the case—then we help our custom- ers with guidances and give them options for different materials that they can use, depend- ing on the application. Dack: You offer a design review service for your customers to make sure all the technologies and materials will work together? That's a great idea. Yes, that is the very first stage. Once we've done the quotation and receive an order from our customers, we have a secondary stage, which is technical questions—DFM. We just make sure that the board is manufacturable as it's been designed. Today, 60% of those technical questions are handled by our own engineer- ing team of about 30–50 engineers in China, Mexico, the U.S., and Europe. Our job is to check the files, making sure we can manufac- ture, or preparing a list of technical questions, and always with options. We are not just telling our customer, "Oh, this doesn't work." We provide them with solutions. en their job is simply to say, "We can accept this, but we cannot accept that." e last stage is also send- ing Gerbers to our customers for them to review one last time before we manufacture the PCB. Dack: It's really good to hear that one of your first steps is a design review, to make sure that everything will line up for an EMS provider. As an EMS provider, one of our frustrations with other fabrication suppliers is that design teams send Gerber data and a panelization detail specification for how it's to be panelized. We send that for quotation and receive the quotation. But it's not until we cut the PO to build the boards that we receive the engineering queries to tell us all the ways that they can't make the boards. When that happens, it's very frustrating, so it's good to hear that you address this in a more successful way. We've heard the same story from many of our customers. Being an ISO company, we always