Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are faced with a supply chain headache like never before. Yet those same headaches caused by managing complex global supply chains also create an opportunity for electronics contract manufacturers (ECMs).
After years of promising an end-to-end service, now is the time for ECMs to stand up and be counted.
Our industry’s ecosystem needs to put its words into action. We need to be in there right at the very point of conception, so we can advise our clients during the design process.
Design stage
When clients show us a concept during the very first look at the design for say, a printed circuit boards, we can start to add value through our experience and engineering knowledge. We can also help our clients to design their systems using the right components, both from an availability standpoint, but also in terms of cost.
Process stage
Spotting potential defects in the components prior to committing the design can save a client money in rework costs by helping design in a zero-defect philosophy.
End-to-End service
Those front-end, value-add engineering steps are only the start of a truly end-to-end service.
ECMs need to have the capacity to build a device, configure a device, and ship a device to the end-user.
Skills around logistics, supply-chain management, and cost control are ones that we already hold within our business. Offering these services to our clients means that we, in effect, become an extension of their own in-house engineering team.
OEMs and entrepreneurial start-ups will embrace ECMs that can lessen their impact on the planet by managing the end-of-life stages for electronic products. Only then will our electronics manufacturing ecosystem truly be able to demonstrate that it is greater than the sum of its parts.
Read the full article, written by Graeme Robertson, and published in Manufacturing Global Magazine, here.
