EMAC is different from your typical Electronic Assembly Contract Manufacturer. First of all we are primarily an Engineering Design Firm that does Manufacturing. We take our Engineering Mindset and apply it to our manufacturing process. The first thing that we do with a new job is to review the design files for manufacturability (DFM). During this review we clear up any questions with the design and make recommendations to improve the yield of the board. If the customer does not want to make the changes, EMAC can make the changes or we can assemble the board as is according to the existing design files. In addition to performing DFM reviews, we can also perform Design for Test (DFT) and Electronic Design reviews if requested.
In our Assembly process we create a closed loop where manufacturing feeds back any issues to Engineering. Engineering then looks for root causes for the issues and creates Engineering Change Requests (ECRs) for each issue. For customer designs, we provide the ECRs to the customer and again they can make the recommended changes to the design or they can have EMAC make the changes. Making these changes will increase the manufacturing yield of the board thus saving the customer money. EMAC has written Custom Productivity Software (mentioned in my last blog) that allows us to track our First Pass Yield to show how improvements affect the board yield.
Additionally, EMAC tends to design and manufacture boards that are fairly complex. Our closed loop process, allows us to successfully manufacture these complex boards. Other CMs use an open loop process and tend to Assemble what they are given with little or no feedback. If an issue exists, they will just deal with it the best they can and increase the cost of the board to compensate for the additional time and fallout from the issue.
Since EMAC is primarily and Engineering company, we can also design and produce custom Test-Sets for customer boards. Again, we have written custom Test Software that can be applied to test virtually any board and delivers all of the test log output to our Board Tracker Database which tracks First Pass Yield or it can log to local storage within the Test-Set. The use of this canned Test Software reduces the Test-Set development cost and provides a better user experience. Doing customer reviews and designing custom Test-Sets allows us to be intimately familiar with a customer’s board assuring that we can exceed customer expectations with the production of their boards.
Lastly, because of to the current environment, many CMs are having difficulty in producing quality boards due to a shortage of employees, insufficiently trained employees and parts shortages. Fortunately, EMAC has been able to retain its highly trained staff and has written custom software to help us manage part lead times and allocations. EMAC is a boutique Manufacturer that can accommodate small to medium size runs of simple to very complex designs. If you are needing a CM to Assemble 50,000 boards EMAC is probably not the best choice. For large runs such as these we would recommend you to one of our Manufacturing partners.
If you have any questions or would like to have EMAC provide you with an Engineering or Assembly quote please reach out to us today.
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