As the owner of electronic equipment manufacturing company, you are likely to be spending a lot of time trying to source your PCBs at the lowest prices possible. It certainly makes sense that you make consistent efforts to get the cheapest quotes. The question however is whether all your efforts are really effective.
Some of the cost saving efforts we take may look like they are yielding the expected results but on the long run when you review the actual savings you would notice that you have spent more than the required amount. Stay away from such approaches when you are sourcing your PCBs and get the most dependable suppliers to take care of your requirements.
If you are interested in saving money while sourcing your PCBs you should try to first understand your own requirements fully. You should not rush to pick the most competitively priced PCB manufacturing company to take care of your requirements instead you should first optimize your own requirements. For example, focusing on the PCB design and keeping the board size small will have a cumulative impact on the overall savings that you are likely to enjoy. Get the best PCB design engineers to design your PCBs because they will know how to make the best use of the board space.
While designing the PCBs itself you should pay attention to the manufacturing hassles when you go for mass production. The design should allow automation of the PCB assembly process. Automating the PCB assembly process will ensure fast completion of the job, uniform quality and also savings on the long run. If the PCB layout is not carefully designed then you will be forced to go for more expensive manual assembly process.
As you could see, there are several factors outside the quote where you could actually bring down the costs. You need to select the right manufacturers that is capable of delivering PCBs of the expected quality. The next time when you are trying to get the lowest quotes for your PCB fabrication needs have all the above factors addressed first so that you could actually enjoy some savings on the long run. Otherwise, you would try to get the lowest quote to save money on the one side but will be wasting money on the other areas due to lack of attention to the above details.
You are also likely to waste more money when you source inferior quality PCBs. Identifying the best supplier for your ongoing PCB needs is very important. Try to establish long term association with your manufacturers and this will certainly help in saving a great deal of money. You do not have to pay for the setup costs multiple times when you stick to the same manufacturers. If you really want to save money on your PCB sourcing process, you will certainly be able to do that and you only need to pay attention to all the above details.
ChinaPCBOne Technology LTD. is the author of this article on PCB manufacturing. Find more information, about PCB assembly.
