Manufacturing low volume electronics can be challenging and expensive. This presentation highlights some common problems and suggestions.

1. Why good design is important in low
volume electronic manufacturing?

2. Who needs low volume manufacturing?
Niche Markets Proprietary Products
Niche Market
Creating unique value proposition Custom fit solution

3. Life Cycle of Electronics Design
Solutions to low volume production issues
Design PCB Component Assembly Testing and Mainstream
Manufacture Sourcing Certification Manufacturing
Issues faced in low volume production

4. Pain Points in low volume electronics manufacturing
Cost of components
Costs and skill set increases
product costs
Component Assembly
Sourcing Skillset
Components are Products have to
difficult to find be hand crafted at
and expensive at low volumes and
low volumes need good
assembly skills

5. Pain Point #1: Components are difficult to find and expensive
at low volumes
Typical supply chain for semiconductor companies
Semiconductor Companies
Online Catalog Suppliers:
Exhautive list of components at
low volume but at a high price
Retailors for Electronic
components:
A small list of components at
low volumes at acceptable
price
Direct Sales
Direct Sales:
Distributor
Components specific to a
company are available but
Distributors:
logistics can make it expensive
Do not cater to low volume
market but offer good prices at
high volumes

6. Options for Component Sourcing
Options Available in low Price List of components
volumes
Online Catalog Yes High Exhaustive list
Retailor Yes Medium Small List
Distributor No Low Depends on companies
represented
Direct Sales Yes Low (but need Only products of a
to include cost particular company
of shipping)
Our Suggestion:
Choose a mix bag of all options. Online catalog for hard to get components,
retailors for lowering price of easily available components and direct sales when
the design has a majority BOM from a single company

7. Pain Point #2: Skillset is required for assembly
At low volumes products are
hand crafted
Automated assembly not feasible at low
volumes
Need skilled technician to
assemble fine pitched
components
Quality issues can result
from a poorly done job

8. Pain Point #3: Product Cost depends on component supply
Product costs are typically high in
low volume business due to cost In low volume business
of components and hand crafted Cost of product forms
product significant part of the total
product cost
In high volume business
Marketing and sales
overheads form a
significant part of
total product cost

9. Design can fix some of these issues
Design
Optimise bill of material Choice of components and
with focus on availability packages with respect to
and cost skillset available

10. R&D centers can play a major role to service your pain point
a)Awareness of component scenario
b)Partnerships with component suppliers
c)Can reuse components across projects to
hit the volume requirement
d)Developed or partnered with the right skill
set to assemble the product
R & D centers

11. Case Study
We had selected a particular IC for our project. However, the
availability was a concern. There were two sources for this
component. a) Online catalog store which sold the IC at 3x
the price and b) Distributor who asked us to provide an min
order value of USD 500 per line. The IC was crucial for us
yet the price of online catalog store would take our product
cost to unacceptable limit. Hence we reused the IC in our
design for other projects and were able to hit the required
minimum order value to get the best price advantage

12. Should you go for low volume electronics
Our Take:
In commodity market low volume electronics is justified where the design
can provide a good return on investment by creating a product differentiation
in terms of feature set or useability
In niche market low volume electronics can still offer a competitive
price advantage
Also, view our slides on custom design for machine builders at:
http://www.emeautomation.com/documentation.html

13. Contact Us
sdas
Website:
www.emeautomation.com
Email:
eme.automation@gmail.com
Location:
Panjim Goa
Phone:
0832-2420489
+91 9960732924