Addressing DFX Challenges in Legacy Products

When an electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider is involved in developing a new product, it is easy to provide design for excellence (DfX) recommendations that align with Lean manufacturing philosophy.

Addressing manufacturability or testability issues associated with legacy products is much more challenging, however. The reasons printed circuit board layout or product design choices may not be optimal are many. Design cycles have been compressed and design resources have been cut at many OEMs. When layout or product development is outsourced to a third-party design team without manufacturing familiarity, the result may be a PCB assembly (PCBA) that meets form, fit, function and cost recommendations, but ignores industry standard design rules, sole sources much of the bill of materials (BoM) or requires unnecessary processing.

SigmaTron's new product introduction (NPI) process evaluates these issues as new projects are onboarded through a combination of an engineering team review and automated checks through a third-party design tool. When improvement opportunities are identified, the team can provide redesign or PCB layout services to correct the issues.

How does this align with Lean manufacturing philosophy? One recent through-hole to SMT conversion is a good illustration. A legacy, mixed-technology PCBA was experiencing material cost and availability issues because it had many through-hole parts that were either going end-of-life (EOL) or sustaining manufacturer price hikes. The OEM was open to converting the bulk of the through-hole parts to SMT. Connectors and a sensor needed to remain unchanged for the PCBA to function within its larger product and remain compatible with the existing test fixture, but the bulk of the layout could be optimized for manufacturability.

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