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Prototype Quality : Getting More Than You Pay For Continued from page 56
manufacturer build what was in the design file exactly as included? Of course, such a strict adher-
ence isn’t always possible in the real world. Violations in design adher- ence can be debugged back to unin- tentional problems, opens or shorts in the PCB itself, or caused by man- ufacturing issues. Or, design adher- ence could be caused by components that do not perform exactly as speci- fied in the data sheet. Lastly, design adherence problems could be caused by a flaw in the circuit design itself.
High Failure Rate This dynamic in a production
product is well documented with the Motorola Razr cell phone in 2006. Two days before the device was released for sale, some savvy cell phone sales reps noticed that the stock of factory refurbished devices was abnormally high. Clearly, since the Razr hadn’t even gone on sale yet, these factory refurbished devices couldn’t have come from customer returns. Instead, these were likely reworked devices that failed final QC at the factory. Concluding that such a high failure rate at the factory would translate to a high-failure phone in the field, these astute sales reps then started advising customers to hold off on purchasing that partic- ular phone. The reps were worried for the onslaught of customer returns and the expense that goes along with handling each return/exchange. In early 2006, faced with a high rate of customer returns, some cell carriers halted sales of the Razr altogether. The problem ultimately was traced
to a faulty component, and resolved at the production facility. The type of issue experienced by
the Razr in 2006 cannot always be caught in prototype, but some issues can be caught. In the prototype phase, design adherence helps the design team concentrate on the behavior of the design dur- ing debugging, not on whether the PCB manufacturer built what the design team specified. Let’s look at an example
based on a standard RMA rate of about percent for PCB manu- facture. We’ll continue with a cost of $1,000/day in design team costs for each day of delay. Then our earlier exam- ple firm, generating 1,000 orders per day of prototype boards, should expect to gener- ate about 20 customer rebuilds daily. If the RMA rebuild requires 3 days to get to the customer, then design teams lose $60,000, cumulatively, per day to Manufacturing RMA. In contrast, Sunstone’s RMA rate of less than 1 percent would translate to a RMA-related loss one-third of the baseline estab- lished. That improved RMA rate annualizes to almost $10 million dollars of saved customer R&D budget. Just as the Razr example demon- strates that one can rate a product’s quality in part by examining the RMA rates, so too can one get a feel for a prototype PCB manufacturing partner from their RMA rates. Sunstone’s RMA rate is less than 1 percent of all orders. This low level of
RMA work shows that Sunstone brings extra value by
l Clearly and proactively publishing their Quickturn manufacturing criteria.
March, 2012
carefully to ensure accurate proto- types, Sunstone plays a key part in making the move from prototype to production more effective and prob- lem-free for design teams. The atten- tion to these details at Sunstone pays off for the customer design team in the long run.
Accessibility Given that the role of a prototype
Checking for design adherence in prototypes ultimately leads to the workbench.
l Providing tools and utilities that design teams can use to incorporate the Quickturn criteria from design start.
l Ensuring that Sunstone complies with all customer-supplied produc- tion manufacturing instructions.
l Offering 25-point design reviews by request, ensuring that customers can make full use of Sunstone’s man- ufacturing expertise. By working so
manufacturing partner is a collabora- tive one, helping to make as much progress per spin as possible, a part- ner you can reach on your own sched- ule and terms is important to your overall productivity. The design team may be under a scheduling deadline for a project and working nights and weekends. If your PCB partner isn’t also available for technical assistance during those times, the design team may be delayed until the next day on a key piece of technical information. Furthermore, with current global business practices, the design team may be on a very different time sched- ule from the manufacturing facility. While it might be tolerable to work with 16 hour time differences to the production facility, the prototype manufacturing provider needs to be much more accessible than the pro- duction facility. This is why you’ll find industry
leaders like Sunstone Circuits offer- ing 24/7/365 technical support cover- age. The Sunstone business model is to make experts available all the time (average customer service phone call wait time is 6 seconds), because the customer calling might be working nights on a critical proj-
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