Boudry, Switzerland

Cicorel - PCB Techday

As some of you may have seen and read in a recent LinkedIn post, Cicorel organized a "Techday" on March 16th, focused on PCB design and manufacturing for our internal EMS customers within the Group. Why did we do this?

The idea came from our experience over the past few years, when we started to be more assertive with our customers in encouraging them to accept our design improvement proposals aimed at better manufacturability.

In the past, we were probably too timid shy to challenge the design of the PCBs submitted by our customers — sometimes because the customer was so important that we didn’t feel legitimate enough to do so, sometimes because the customer mentioned that another supplier had accepted the design as it was, and sometimes for other "wrong" reasons...

However, if we want to satisfy a customer with high delivery performance expectations, it all starts with good design tailored to manufacturing processes and industry best practices. That is the only way to achieve the best manufacturing yield, the highest quality, and therefore, the right price and on-time delivery (OTD).

Put like that, it sounds simple... but it’s not.

Our valued customers also face their own project constraints and milestones, and depending on the product’s application (for instance, in the medical field), it can be extremely complicated to modify a design (even slightly), as it could trigger long qualification processes and high costs that projects and resources cannot always accommodate.

We therefore sought to embed this "Design for Manufacturing" (DfM) approach from the very early stages of product development with our customers. How could we do that? How could we get involved at a stage when even the customer is still exploring design options?

Of course, some very good information is available in our Design Guidebook available online. But: does the customer know about it? Have they read it (maybe they are using a competitor’s guide)? And do they really understand all the aspects and consequences? How could we train and raise awareness among our customers about these design rules?

In the end, we decided to create a dedicated training program for our customers, in the form of a "PCB Techday," where we not only train them in DfM, but also offer a unique immersion into PCB manufacturing. Moreover, by organizing this event, we created opportunities to strengthen our relationships with our customers, through both formal and informal meetings.

Ultimately, what we wanted to initiate was the idea that whenever our customers think about a PCB, they automatically think first about "Cicorel."

To start developing this approach naturally, we decided to offer this first Techday to our internal customers within the Cicor Group. 15 participants from 8 companies in the Cicor Group attended the event, during which we shared our PCB expertise, the manufacturing steps (including a factory tour), the RFQ (Request for Quotation) process, design guidelines, and our latest innovations.

At the end of the day, we enjoyed some a great moment together playing laser tag and having a delicious dinner.

Given the excellent feedback we received from participants, it confirmed that this Techday clearly meets a real need among our customers, and we will now also offer this event to our external and third-party customers.

Benoit Fueg
Managing Director