Vista Blue Blog

Intellectual Property, the Other IP

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:06:00 -0600

In this post, we'll discuss Intellectual Property (IP), (not to be confused with Internet Protocol) and how it relates to manufacturing and ownership of electronic designs. Recent involvement with a client that purchased product marketing and manufacturing rights was an eye opener. The client intended to purchase product rights only to discover the purchase agreement didn't spell out details of what they were buying. Coincidently, much of the same information that makes up a product IP is the ideal package for quotation and manufacturing.

It is not the intention of this article to spell out the legalities of development or product purchase agreements. I hope to lay out some guidelines for what information to expect as a result of new product development or purchasing of marketing and manufacturing rights. Any agreement for developing a new product or purchasing rights to an existing product should include clear legal ownership of the IP.

Regardless of manufacturing quantities or design technology, a complete documentation package is recommended for maintaining quality, product reliability, and long term consistency of manufacturing. Small or large volume runs produced internally or utilizing a contract manufacturer should rely on a well maintained documentation package.

The following items comprise a complete documentation package for the manufacturing of an electronic assembly or electro-mechanical product. The list should not be considered a one-size-fits-all solution to documentation; requirements for each product vary based on features and complexity. The items as a whole would make up the IP of the product.

Documentation Package Contents:

Electrical Schematic
Determines requirements for circuit functionality, layout, and PCB design. Aids in testing, troubleshooting and repair of units. Used as a basis for circuit modification or feature enhancement for future designs. It's not always necessary to share the schematic with quoting contract manufacturers but may be needed to accurately estimate test services.

Source Code (firmware)
Custom software written during design, installed and run in the unit's processor. Determines how inputs and outputs are read and reacted to, in a sense the brains of the device. It's usually not necessary to share source code during the quotation phase of contract assembly.

Gerber Files
Group of files that are the instructions for manufacturing the bare printed circuit board (PCB).

Bill of Material
Usually spreadsheet format list of all material used in making the assembly. Critical information includes component description, manufacturer, manufacturer part number, and where used. See a vista-blue.com blog entry on the subject here.

Drawings for Custom Components
Details for assembly or procurement of non off-the-shelf (OTS) components. Examples might be enclosures, faceplates, cables, or sub-assemblies. Various CAD or Adobe Illustrator® files are usually format for these files. Also consider tooling and drawings for injection molds, aluminum extrusion, and other custom operations and components as part of the package.

Test Procedure
Written procedure describing the equipment and sequence of operation to bench test and confirm proper unit operation.

Assembly Instructions / Drawings
Information detailing assembly operations that may be unique to your assembly, relevant to subassembly production, or important to suppliers. Many times these instructions are developed by the assembler or contract manufacturer, consider these instructions part of the package and try to get copies for your files.

Applicable Standards
Workmanship standard IPC-A610, RoHS / lead-free compliance, and UL certification should be considered. Other IPC, J-Standard, Aerospace, FDA, or wireless standards like FCC or PTCRB may come into play. The standards compliance of your particular product should be spelled out on an assembly drawing or other controlled document in the package.

When sharing documentation with outside parties, I advise using a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). Anyone involved in technology based development or manufacturing should be comfortable signing an NDA and demonstrate their commitment to protecting your IP. If at anytime you come across designers, developers, manufacturers, consultants, etc. that are unwilling to enter into an NDA, be tight-lipped and run the other way. No honest, reputable professional should hesitate to sign an NDA. Those of us that have been in development and manufacturing for many years understand the need to protect IP. Whether developing a product or purchasing product rights, be sure to get all of what you pay for and protect your investment.

Thanks for reading, comments, additions and corrections are welcome.

Bill

You Can’t Say BOM on an Airplane

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:58:00 -0700

This is part two of the earlier "Baby, it's the BOM" post and covers what content should be in the Bill of Material (BOM) for electronic contract manufacturing (CM). Most contract manufacturers specialize in adapting to a customers way of doing things, including your BOM format. If the CM makes too many demands about BOM format and content it may be a red flag. I for one have never been an advocate of forcing customers to adapt to the contract manufacturer documentation system. Having said that, it doesn't relieve the customer of responsibility of BOM quality, BOMs written on a cocktail napkin are generally frowned upon, even by me.

The most important thing about the BOM supplied to your contract manufacturer is accuracy; correct and current manufacturer part numbers, quantities, reference designators, etc. Errors might be discovered during quotation, BOM review, prototype, pre-production, or production phases but usually the further into the process the higher the potential for bad consequences. BOM discrepancies can cause inaccuracy with the quoted cost or lead-time, mistakes in material ordering, rework, project delays, and the dreaded cost adjustment. Make sure all BOM errors found are quickly reported and redline changes are incorporated promptly and accurately. A common error seen is reference designator to quantity discrepancies, many times the error is shown as U1, U6 and should be U1-U6 or vice versa, a quantity discrepancy of four.

As mentioned in the earlier "Baby, It's the BOM" post, most CMs can work with a Microsoft Excel BOM, it's a pretty universal format to share. So, just what BOM information does the CM need to accurately quote and manufacture electronic assemblies? Here's a list of BOM items and a good place to start for content, described in the order to appear on your spreadsheet columns:

Item Number
Basically, just a sequential number showing how many different part numbers are on the BOM. Item numbers are not critical to the assembly but are useful for verbal and email communications, verification, comparison, inspections, etc.

Part Number (Customer PN)
I recommend that customers generate their own part number for each component that goes into the making of an assembly. It's an area that can quickly become overly complicated if identifying all parameters of a component from the part number is required or desired. From the CMs perspective, it really doesn't matter how much or little pain was endured to create the number. We just need the number to be unique to the specific component, preferably numeric, and a consistent length. I wouldn't recommend just taking the manufacturer part number and using that because over time the manufacturer is likely to obsolete or change the number and cause confusion. Also, using a manufacturer's part number for a customer part number creates confusion if there are multiple approved manufacturers.

Component Revision (Rev)
Primarily used for custom parts like the bare PCB, custom cables, metalwork, plastic etc. Revs can also be useful for tracking firmware versions. It is a good idea to put the rev of at least the bare PCB on the BOM to prevent potential ordering mistakes.

Description
A generic description of the components and items needed to complete an assembly. The description should be as consistent as possible in syntax, capitalization, and order of information presentation. Include component type, value, tolerance, and voltage as applicable. It is sometimes a good idea to include the manufacture's description and component marking information. Include package type for SMT devices if possible; it can be helpful to process engineers and equipment programmers.

Manufacturer
Include the name of the approved company that produces the component, not the distributor. It is important to include only manufacturers that have been verified to work on your product thru engineering approval and/or testing. If testing has confirmed more than one approved manufacturer, alternate or additional manufacturers can be listed with the corresponding manufacturer part number. Be sure to let your CM know that a change to manufacturers without written approval is unacceptable. Changing manufacturers without verification can create performance issues with the end product, components sometimes don't play well together.

Manufacturer Part Number
List the manufacturer's part number as it would be ordered, the number's association to a specific manufacturer should be easily identifiable. Be sure to keep the number current since mfg's may change the number for specification or performance changes, RoHS, merger/aquisition, etc. Keep in mind that a manufacturer may adjust the part number for packaging (e.g. reel, tube) and can significantly affect product pricing if excess material is amortized by the CM.

Reference Designator
The reference designator, sometimes shown as "ref", "reference" or "designator" on the BOM is critical to correct printed circuit board assembly. The reference designator on the BOM corresponds to the same marking on the PCB silkscreen, assembly drawing, and schematic. All assembly, inspection, and support personnel depend on the accuracy of the designator to know exactly where each component will be placed. As mentioned earlier, reference designator errors are not uncommon. Missing, extra, duplicate, or the comma/dash switch (U1, U6 versus U1-U6) are errors to be on the lookout for, accuracy and syntax is critical.

Quantity
Indicates the total number of times a component is used on the assembly. Not much to talk about here, just make sure it's accurate and matches the quantity specified by the reference designators.

Unit of Measure
Most parts will have a UM or UOM of "ea" for each. For adhesives or sealants you might use "oz" for ounce, "g" for gram, or "ml" for milliliter. For cable or wire you might see "in" for inch, "ft" for feet, "mm" for millimeter, "m" for meter, etc. Unit of measure is helpful in determining the quantity of material being purchased or pulled for a kit but it can also be helpful to assembly workers.

Thanks for reading, I encourage and welcome any questions, comments, or input.

New vista-blue.com site goes Live

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:10:00 -0600

Vista Blue unveils shiny new website complete with interactive Contract Manufacturing Blog. The new site gives the advantage of an integrated SiverStripe Content Management System (CMS). The CMS makes maintenance of the blog and news sections easy and updates to site content are a snap. We are interested in any feedback visitors have about the site, please leave a comment with impressions.

Baby, it’s the BOM

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 16:01:00 -0600

The importance of the Bill of Material (BOM) can’t be stressed enough in the electronic contract manufacturing (ECM) world. The BOM needs to be thought of as the “bible” of product manufacturing, with authority over all people and other documents, lesser documents bow in presence of the BOM.

Having been in the contract manufacturing business since Intel’s leading edge product was the 16 pin DIP Eprom, I’ve seen BOMs in every imaginable format. From the many hundreds of customers that I’ve have manufactured products for, most get that the BOM is driving force behind the entire process. Surprisingly though, there are a higher than expected number of companies having work done by electronic manufacturing services (EMS) companies that need a little guidance. For the multitude of companies getting it right, good job, your ECM, or EMS thanks you, there still may be some useful info in this post for you too.

This is really for the folks that are driving their suppliers crazy and don’t know it. In my opinion, probably the most important thing for customers to remember is that they should never relinquish total BOM control to their supplier. Sure, your ECM will need to alert you to BOM changes for many reasons like obsolete and changing manufacturer part numbers, errors, typos, etc. A good supplier should also be providing specs & samples and requesting approval from you for component substitutions for cost reduction and availability reasons. The point is, even if your supplier has well organized and well documented substitution approval procedures; make sure that BOMs in your possession are always accurate. Believe me, your supplier wants you to be in control of the BOM and will be glad to help maintain accuracy of your documents. A good supplier would never want to risk a BOM discrepancy dispute later, take advantage of it.

BOM File Format The most common format to share BOMs between supplier and customer is MS Excel. Not only is Excel a universally common application but most MRP systems are able to import and export to that format. Providing the BOM in a digital format like Excel is important to help keep typos and data entry errors to a minimum. Digital file formats and file sharing techniques between supplier and customer can vary greatly; discuss it with your supplier early in the program.

BOM Rev Control Yes, you should use revision control on your BOM. Suppliers are accustomed to working within many different customer rev control systems, the important thing is to use one and maintain it well. I have observed customers using rev letters, numbers, combination letter/number, and even a date to identify and successfully control BOM revisions. I personally don’t have a strong preference as to the method, just keep it current. To close the loop on quoting and building the correct product version, it’s a smart idea to include the BOM rev on the RFQ, quote, PO, and assembly.

Indented and Multilevel BOMs There are so many different opinions about Indented BOMs that I was not planning on going into too much detail about it. Indented and Multilevel BOMs generally refer to material required to assemble subassemblies that are assigned their own part numbers. The process can get complicated with components changing part numbers as work is completed. To further complicate matters, various MRP programs manage the process differently, coordinating between customer and supplier documentation systems can be a chore. I can’t offer “one size fits all” solutions here, all I can do is raise awareness and recommend that customers and suppliers have the conversation early in the program.

Next time we’ll talk about BOM content, really fun stuff. See part 2 "You Can't Say BOM on an Airplane" Thanks for checking out the blog, I encourage and welcome any questions, comments, or input.

Welcome to the Electronic Contract Manufacturing Blog

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:07:00 -0600

Hello, and welcome to the first installment of my blog. I hope to share some of my knowledge and experience from the electronic contract manufacturing business to help others. I'm pretty sure that my 25+ years experience in the business qualifies me to lend my advice or at least an opinion on the subject of electronic manufacturing and outsourcing.

I would think that the topics discussed here will be of interest to those utilizing as well as providing electronic contract manufacturing services. Many of the subjects covered here will be of interest for the ability to speed project start up and assist in long term manufacturing cost savings.

I encourage comments on any posts and welcome suggestions for topics.
Thanks for stopping by,

Bill Ostrowski
President and Owner
Vista Blue, LLC