Professional Partnerships

So who are these partners that enhance our capability?

Field Application Engineers for a start. Sometimes they are directly employed by a manufacturer and in some cases by distributors. These people are your design partners; they know their company products inside out. Not sure what part to use? That is not an unusual question. Whether you are designing a filter (perhaps with the ADI Filter Wizard) or trying to select an appropriate microcontroller, chances are that you may still need assistance beyond the use of the tool. As an example, I was designing some filters in very low power environment and although the wizard was useful I still asked for assistance for parts that were lower power than those suggested by the tool. The value of the support from FAEs cannot be overstated.

So celebrate the FAEs who make our engineering lives simpler so we can focus on the solution. This is not to say we cannot choose our own parts but when there is a somewhat wide range of parts available (the array of buck converters for a given application can be bewildering, for example) the knowledge of the FAE who will have access to information on stock, availability and cost is invaluable.

Next up; The Electronics Contract Manufacturers (Assemblers).

Unless you are part of a company that has electronic manufacturing capability (few and far between due to the very high cost of the necessary equipment) the chances are high you will be using this service to manufacture your boards.

They often have their own complete ecosystem for PCB assembly manufacture; a PCB fabricator (usually more than 1) and a kitting department (or an external agent) for parts procurement. Sometimes we will free issue unusual parts (such as test equipment connectors which can be somewhat difficult to source) but in general they are a one stop shop for many designs.

They often provide test facilities so your new design can be fully tested before it is shipped to you. They will provide invaluable assistance in design for manufacture, design for test and more. The cost of using these services is very competitive compared to trying to get your own PCB (where DFM is probably not done) and using your own (or colleagues) time and effort to populate them. With 0.5mm (and smaller) pin pitch being common these services make a huge amount of sense.

Do not consider a CEM as just a vendor; this is a relationship that must be nurtured so that each of you understands the needs of the other.

For microcontrollers, the vendor is often your partner for the IDE and toolchain (#SiliconLabs has an impressive array of tools and is one of my favourite vendors). Others do much the same.

There are many more; the mechanical partners who you can ask about the best design for an enclosure for a given environment.

The connector companies who can help you choose the appropriate interconnect.

Partners that are not often referenced make our lives easier in the design process such as #Ultralibrarian and #SnapEDA.

So these companies are not faceless vendors; they are critical to your success in engineering.

#engineering #electronics #AnalogDevices #Software #industrypartners