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16 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2024 e designer needs to have a working under- standing of two key manufacturing operations: basic circuit board fabrication procedures and assembly process practices. For printed cir- cuit board manufacturing, the number of steps required to produce the printed circuit board correlates to the circuit board's complexity. Greater process complexity in fabricating the circuit board equates to increased costs. To develop any portion of the electronic product, the designer must apply the design for manu- facturing (DFM) principles established in the industry. In fact, DFM should always be the goal of the design engineer. It encompasses a wide range of disciplines that must be consid- ered during the planning phase of any product. e critical elements of DFM principles include: • Design for fabrication efficiency (DFF) • Design to enable electrical test (DFT) • Design for assembly processing (DFA) • Design for end product reliability (DFR) What Designers Need to Know About Manufacturing, Part 1 Designers Notebook Feature Column by Vern Solberg, CONSULTANT