A business that sells (or wants to sell) a product with electronics inside should have someone in charge of the design, revisions, and ongoing success of the PCB, and to always be seeking the best deal for what’s needed.
Let’s say you were hiring for that position and I were to apply for the job.
During the interview, we’d get aligned on a basic truth that unattended PCBs are constantly drifting toward disorder, and that entropy is especially cruel to electronics. PCBs are hard to make, parts go out of stock with no notice, files get out of sync, tweaks don’t get documented, and competitors keep pushing in, sometimes copying what you’ve done, sometimes copying it and doing it better.
And as if “preventing the worst” weren’t enough work, there’s the parallel job of increasing the PCB’s value over time. There’s always a next question: can we lower cost? Can we make it smaller? Should we harden production test? Can we spin a variant that reuses 80% of the BOM? Can we add a complementary product on the same sales funnel? A PCB program is never “done.”
After we swap a few war stories, I’d then want to walk you through what my first two weeks on the job would look like:
My first moves
On my first day, everyone I came in contact with would know that I see the PCB as a main entity of the product. A PCB isn’t just a circuit board inside a box. It’s the thing that makes your product work in the real world. If it fails, people don’t blame the board, they blame the business. A customer thinking, “wow, that’s pricey,” is far less damaging than a customer thinking, “they couldn’t even make it work.”
So, day one, I’d want to know very plainly:
- What is this PCB supposed to do?
- Does it actually do that right now, in production?
- Do we have a test strategy so we know it’s still doing that when it leaves our hands?
- Are you satisfied with the production cost?
No guessing. Those are yes/no questions so we can see the gaps. Most businesses will answer “no” to at least one of them, which tells me a high-stakes decision is coming. And high-stakes decisions are best made with counsel.
So the next step is: who actually knows this product? I want to hear from the designer, the firmware person, the sales or support person who hears customer complaints, the person who wrote the original requirements, and the buyer who knows which parts are always backordered. That’s the real picture.
If I’m going to help you make good decisions, I need the information pulled out of people’s heads and put somewhere in writing where it will last. Spoken plans get fuzzy. Written plans survive.
Write it down
If you don’t already have a slide deck and a weekly PCB/product review on the calendar, I’d create one. We’d start capturing decisions in writing. If we learn you’re not satisfied with production cost – that goes on the slide. If the goal shifts to “reduce cost and shrink the board,” that gets written on the slide and presented. Relying on “I thought everyone heard that” is like playing the game on hard-mode. So, if a PCB/product review strategy meeting doesn’t exist, this is where we’d start.
The next thing I’d want is real numbers on our product assembly quotes. Even early-stage prototypes have enough information for a proforma production quote. I’d need the following:
- Expected volumes (yearly) (So we can map cash flow against realistic volume price breaks.)
- Whether it all has to stay in the USA or if some things can be sourced globally (If some items can be sourced globally, we can unlock savings. Offshore PCBA is highly debatable, but PCB fabrication offshore is often an easy win if lead time allows.)
- The BOM so I can compare your part costs to the vendor’s part costs (I’ll compare your costs to the vendor’s. All PCBA vendors mark up parts to some degree – that’s normal. The question is how much, and whether it makes sense for us to supply key parts to capture major savings.)
- A read on their flexibility, transparency, and whether I can talk to the same person every time (you want a partner who can run custom checks before shipment and learn our preferences over time.)
When my research is complete, I’d bring you options – with notes on payment terms, MOQs, lead times, and what the batch schedule could look like – and we’d pick the one that makes business sense for your projected sales volume and cash flow. There are lots of levers to pull here, so a discussion between you and I is better than you being out of the loop.
BOM is the weakest point
In PCBAs, the BOM is almost always the weakest link. During COVID, fab and assembly could usually be found – it was parts that took companies down. Unfortunately, parts can come and go overnight, so there is no perfect way to protect yourself.
As soon as possible, I’d look ahead at what’s most likely to bite us. I’d:
- Identify the critical parts that don’t have drop-in replacements
- Rank them by “how expensive and disruptive would it be to redesign if this part disappears?”
- Talk to you about warehousing some, approving substitutes, or designing out the risky ones
Microcontrollers, radio chips, power ICs, specialty/sensor ICs – those are the ones that hurt when they go missing. Caps and resistors almost never take a company down (except during the Capacitor Plague (1999–2007) where typhoons in Taiwan and industrial espionage led to a faulty electrolyte formula, which caused a global shortage of aluminum electrolytic capacitors, and the auto industry got first dibs on everything once everything got corrected. But I digress…)
Lock down the files and the process
Too often I hear stories about businesses that don’t have access to their own design files. Worst case they don’t have them at all because the engineer left three years ago and the files were on their laptop. More common is that the files exist, but they’re scattered in email threads and nobody is sure which version is “the real one.” I wouldn’t let you be one of those statistics, so I’d prioritize knowing:
- Where the latest engineering files live
- Where the latest manufacturing files live
- Where the backups live
- Who is responsible for keeping it all updated and communicated
If you don’t already have an SOP for version control, I’d write one for you. We’d include:
- Schematic and PCB layout files (Altium, Eagle, OrCAD, KiCAD, etc.)
- Source code / firmware
- BOMs
- Gerbers
- PDFs / assembly drawings
- Test instructions and power-on notes
- Programmer cables/adapters
- And I’d want a golden unit in my possession
You can not run a product where every change is a scavenger hunt.
A PCB is never “done”
About a week has gone by. Next I’d sit down with you and say: based on what we heard from vendors, designers, production, and parts availability – what’s the next version of this product? Is it lower cost? Smaller? More robust test? A new product variant that reuses 80% of the BOM? A complementary product that rides the same sales funnel?
By the end of that conversation, we’d have a written, forward-looking vision for the product line. And I’d begin operating against that.
For example, if cost is the vision, we start at the BOM: I’d sort by the 10 most expensive items. Talk to designers about reducing or replacing those. Then look at total part placements, because placement count usually drives a big chunk of assembly cost (often ~60% of PCBA labor).
If the vision is to erase those bugs, add a feature, or design a complementary product, then we run it like a real product effort:
- Get you, me, and the engineers on the same page
- Revisit the PRD/spec and update it to what we actually want now
- Estimate the timeline, scope the deliverables
- Create a short sprint plan
- Daily, lightweight check-ins with designers (scrum style) so things don’t stall
- Weekly check-ins with stakeholders
Electronic products don’t stay healthy on their own. Someone has to answer vendor questions, sort out bad boards, and keep asking “what’s next?” – owning the PCB, the BOM, the tests, the files, and the roadmap for the product’s entire life. Whether that’s you or someone you delegate to, there must be an accountable owner.
How I’d conclude the interview:
You need engineers and specialists you can call when things go sideways, but they don’t have to be on your payroll. There are full-service PCB design and manufacturing partners who win only when your product succeeds. They bring the team, the ideas, and the discipline to keep things running for you. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
That’s what my company, Henway, does. Point me at a product today and I’ll run the process, with the people and the tools so you don’t have to.