Which process offers fewer steps – and less contamination?

In a perfect world, the electronics industry would have migrated to 100% SMT by now. Unfortunately, through-hole remains a required technology for some products. In particular, through-hole connectors are often preferred over their SMT counterparts due to the robust solder joints they provide.

From a Lean perspective, a requirement for mixed technology can open the door to several of the seven wastes, as it can drive the need for processes not required for a 100% SMT printed circuit board assembly (PCBA). In particular, the wastes of transport and processing can occur when separate solder processes are required for the same PCBA. The need to do multiple thermal cycles when processing via reflow and wave solder also potentially adds to the waste of defects, as it can plant the seeds for premature component failure and handling damage.

5G has great potential, but brings power challenges at the infrastructure and board levels.

5G network capacity is predicted to increase as much as 1000-fold by 2030. That's a stunning increase that can be attributed to effects such as our digital lifestyles and digital business transformation. Clearly, our dependence on online services that are available anytime, anywhere and at full speed shows no sign of abating. The effect on global energy demand could be even more stunning. The information & communications technology (ICT) industry currently consumes about 4% of the world's electricity, and this could increase to an amazing 20% with the growth of 5G networks. In absolute terms, that's equivalent to 150 quadrillion BTU per year.

Of course, 5G is huge, in scope as well as deployment. It covers low frequency bands, up to about 1GHz, although the main benefits of 5G are its ability to carry richer services that by their nature require faster data rates. These will push the limits of Frequency Range 1 (FR1) as defined by 5G standards, up to 6GHz in the FR1 range, and even higher in FR2 that extends into the millimeter-wave bands at 60-70GHz and even beyond. While services in the FR1 bands can support data rates of about 1-2Gbit/s, the higher bands are needed to support multi-gigabit data rates and latency of less than a few milliseconds.

Don't be afraid to drop bad fit customers.

Since tax season is upon us, I recently had a chat with my CPA. She is co-owner of one of the largest accounting firms in my area and I've done business with her for over two decades, so we discuss business strategy in addition to going over the numbers. This year, she mentioned they were planning to rationalize their customer base, eliminating those who tended to provide incomplete records right before critical deadlines. She saw these clients as problematic to her business for two reasons: they overloaded resources and their behavior increased the probability her team would make a mistake.

There is a parallel in the electronics manufacturing services (EMS) industry. Ask any longtime industry CEO and they will say 80% of their issues come from 20% of their customer base. Why do EMS companies keep bad fit customers? There are a number of reasons:

What’s best for your design may not be what’s best for assembly.

Printed circuit board assemblies animate a collection of components designed to do something useful. Joining those components on a board that completes the connections with a circuit pattern is the best solution we have to create modern electronic devices. The performance and reliability of the device is largely determined by interconnections on the PCB assembly.

The placement itself is a function of the signal connectivity on a local scale and voltage domains on a macro scale. More chips equal more voltage domains. Each IC requires dedicated support consisting of some or all of the following:

• Passive components that do the grunt work of supplying and filtering power
• External clocks for optimizing data flow
• Local power supplies
• Test points, connectors, etc.
• Wherever the I/O pins take you in terms of neighboring components.