Newsletter
Everyone says they do it. But there are very different levels of collaboration between engineering services providers and their OEM customers. Our approach is truly unique in this industry.
Every one of our customers has areas of core expertise, and they will do that part of the design. They come to us for help with the rest. We first work to understand the reasons for their design decisions and what challenges they are trying to solve.
Very often we will look at the requirements and suggest a feature or change that costs little to nothing. We hear, “Wow, you can do that? That would be great!”
As the customer’s engineers get to know our team they realize that we can do much more for them. It’s not because we’re smarter than they are (though we’re pretty smart). It’s that we have:
- different skills and experiences.
- a full engineering department with expertise in different areas.
- respect for their expertise and how we can complement it.
Here are a few of the collaborative development projects we’re working on now.
Customer defines components and enclosure; we do the electronics and more
We are working with a customer on an industrial sensing system. This customer understands sensors and has selected the specific sensing components they needed. They have also designed an enclosure suited to their industry.
They came to us for circuit development. We designed electronics they can use to qualify and sort sensors from different manufacturers, and test them in a realistic environment. As we worked, they also discovered that we could do 3D-printed prototypes of their enclosure. We did a number of design iterations together, bouncing ideas back and forth through to get what they needed.
Full design based on the customer’s rough schematic
One customer sketched a rough schematic to let us know what they wanted the product to do. We selected parts, created the completed schematic using our schematic capture tools, did the board layout, and shipped prototypes in about three weeks.
This customer’s engineer understands schematics, so that was the easiest way to communicate their ideas to us. But they don’t have the expensive schematic capture and layout tools that we do, and they don’t design enough boards in a year to justify that expense or go through the learning curve. However, they are interested in developing that expertise in house. So we are mentoring them on it, confident that we will continue to collaborate.
Software collaboration with custom boards and an off-the-shelf PLC
A long-time customer has a motion control system consisting of an off-the-shelf PLC (programmable logic controller) that they selected, and several custom boards that we have developed for them.
Their engineers write software for the PLC and we write the software for our boards. This takes a LOT of collaboration, for example defining the communications interface for an industrial OLED graphic display driver.
In addition to the PLC programming, they do the mechanical design. We do the schematics and PCB layout, help design the wire harnesses, and manufacture the boards and wire harnesses.
Suggesting low-cost improvements to the system
A customer has us to design and manufacture a PCB, incorporating their 2×2” daughter card. We are now working on the next generation of this product, where we will integrate the functionality onto the main board instead of using the daughter board.
In the process, we realized the main component on the daughter board was a microprocessor, and that it had pins available. We suggested a use for those pins that added an important feature to the product, at no additional cost.
Modernizing a design while enabling software re-use
A customer has a ten-year-old product in the power generation field. It needed an update to meet new higher-voltage safety requirements, and it had to be done fast. Because the customer’s engineering staff is busy with other projects, they asked us to take this on.
We redesigned and modernized the entire system. We reduced the number of boards, moved from IBGT to MOSFET components, reduced EMI, and improved robustness.
As we worked, we were very cognizant that this a software-intensive system with two microprocessors. The customer’s software engineer is here several days a week, working with us through bring-up and troubleshooting the hardware and software. As we developed the new boards, we made sure they could re-use 95% of the existing code, saving many hours of time.
There are three main ways that OEM engineers can work with a design services provider or contract manufacturer:
1. Provide your input as functional specs, and have your partner do the entire design including schematics and layouts.
2. Provide your completed schematics, and have your partner do the layout and production. They may also give you advice on component selection and DFM.
3. Build-to-print projects where you just want a contract manufacturer to produce what you have designed.
We can work with any of these approaches and have done so. But usually we take a much more collaborative approach that is truly unique in this industry.