Choosing the Right Flexible Circuit Supplier - Five Critical Considerations

Do you see flexible circuitry as a possible design solution for your application, but lack experience with circuitry suppliers? Being new to flexible circuit technology doesn't mean that you are destined to climb a steep learning curve and make expensive supply chain mistakes. However, it does require that you choose the right partner to meet your requirements.

Choosing a flexible circuit supplier can be a hit or miss proposition for companies inexperienced with flexcircuit technology or the supply chain. Often times companies view flex circuitry as a "commodity" and award the business to the lowest bidder. This can be a costly mistake. To make the best choice, you need to understand that very few circuitry suppliers are good at everything; rather, they tend to develop a specialty. Ideally, you want your supplier to have a developed capability that dovetails with the requirements of your product.

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There are five critical considerations to keep in mind during the selection process to ensure the "best fit". With these criteria in mind, you can make an informed decision with confidence.

1. Design and Applications Engineering Capability: Does your potential supplier have the technology and expertise to support your design needs?

Each circuit must function in a unique environment so it is important to identify key product characteristics for the application. This will need to include any manufacturing processes it must withstand. Key product characteristics will include:

Mechanical: If bent, what is the radius of the bend, the location of the bend, the number of cycles, and what direction? Is mechanical abrasion possible?

Chemical: What chemical exposure will this see both during assembly and during operation?

Thermal: What thermal exposure will the part see both during assembly and during operation?

Electrical: How much current is being carried? Is there shielding or controlled impedance? Does the circuit rest against a conductive surface?

Dimensional: How big is it? What size are the conductor traces and spaces? What is the cutline to edge tolerance? Maximum or minimum thickness?

Surface finish: How will this be connected to the rest of the world? What assembly processes will be employed?

The above information will allow the flex supplier to make good recommendations for tooling, processes and materials so the product meets the end use requirements. Various films, adhesives, and metal types perform best in certain applications, driven by key product characteristics

Many customers will supply the flex circuit manufacturer with completed Gerber files or a detailed schematic for the electronic design. Some of the more sophisticated suppliers can take a net list and convert it into a circuit lay out or redesign a wire bundle into an alternative flexible circuit design. The customer need for design assistance will vary considerably and is a key consideration when choosing a flexcircuit supplier. Make sure your potential flexible circuitry supplier has the design software and engineering expertise to support your design needs.

2. Volume Capabilities: Do your volume requirements match with your supplier's capacity?

With initiatives to adopt lean manufacturing, suppliers are claiming to reduce cycle time, minimize waste, and improve set-up time. Are you looking for very high volume, quick-turn low volume, or something in between? Manufacturers of high volume circuitry tend to be highly automated, using processes and materials geared toward lowest possible costs in very high volume consumer markets. High volume tends to be roll to roll, with specialized equipment to handle continuous rolls of thin, flexible material. These suppliers minimize labor content and may get better pricing on raw materials. Tooling costs are quite high and production run sizes are based on minimum roll sizes. Capital equipment costs are high, so square foot throughput is a necessity. These suppliers provide low volume and quick-turn circuits to support programs on the path to high volume serial production.

Low to medium volume suppliers process flexible circuits in rectangular shaped panels and employ equipment designed to support a wider variety of process flows and materials. Low cost tooling and compressed cycle times are more available with panel processing while the machine operations tend to be more flexible and operator intensive. These suppliers are more likely to build a diversified range of flexible circuitry. Extended length circuits, multiple plating surfaces, reverse bared flex and multilayer flex are examples of parts that generally require panelized processing.

3. Fabrication Capabilities: Can your supplier routinely handle your fabrication requirements?

There are four broad types of flexcircuits: single sided, double sided, multilayer and rigid-flex. These types are characterized by the IPC (Institute for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronic Circuits), as Type I, Type II, Type III and Type IV respectively. Definitions from the IPC are:

Single-sided (flexible printed wiring containing one conductive layer, with or without stiffener). Double-sided (flexible printed wiring containing two conductive layers with plated-through holes, with or without stiffeners). Multilayer (flexible printed wiring containing three or more conducting layers). Rigid flex (rigid and flexible material combinations containing three or more conductive layers).
Fabrication of any printed circuit consists of 20-40 sequential processes. As layers are added, the manufacturing complexity goes up significantly, as do the number of process steps. Multilayer circuitry requires process specialization with fixturing, plasma etching, registration, and inspection capability. Material stability is a key consideration in both tooling design, trace pattern layout, plating parameters and through hole drilling processes.

Density requirements can be a significant consideration. Many flex manufacturers struggle as conductor features approach .003" lines and spaces. This degree of feature density is often supplied by "running for yield", but limited capability will involve added costs and inconsistent vendor performance. Specialty equipment is available to handle such requirements and precision imaging systems with clean room manufacturing areas are musts.

An ability to accurately align features from among sequential processes is another critical requirement as density increases and circuit sizes shrink. Tooling to create precision features for zero insertion force connectors (ZIF) is critical as feature to feature requirements at 4. Post Fabrication Assembly: Has your flex supplier invested in the technology and expertise to adequately handle your component assembly needs?

Many users of flexible circuitry are also looking for a supplier to do component assembly. A flex circuit fabricator also providing assembly eliminates supply chain handoffs. Several manufacturers assemble circuitry requiring low component counts. As volume increases, pick and place automation, reflow soldering, wire bonding, through-hole assembly and functional testing are required to cost effectively provide assembly services. Key variables for process control are quite different for assembly versus fabrication. In addition, supply chain management and storage control of electronic components become increasingly critical. Does the supplier understand ESD and reliability issues? Are they able to supply RoHS compliant assemblies? Assembling on a flex circuit is much different than assembly on hard boards primarily due to unique material handling and fixturing characteristics. Fabricators need to invest in the equipment, systems, and expertise to effectively assemble as well as fabricate.

5. Certifications and Quality Systems: Has your flex supplier demonstrated its capability and commitment by achieving certifications that are important in your industry?

Certain applications and industries may require adherence to specific protocols and requirements. While in some cases, the sub component supplier does not need to meet all the requirements and protocols that the end producer must meet, it still is vital that the supplier understand the end needs.

Companies that achieve certifications have demonstrated the ability to design and build product with quality and manufacturing systems adequate for a specific market. Probably the most common certification is ISO 9000 and ISO 9001. Below is a list of other certifications that a supplier may have or need:

ISO 13485:2003- Medical device AS9100, AS9110 and AS9120- Aerospace ITAR- Military ISO/TS 16949, QS 9000- Automotive Market FDA Registrations- Medical Device TL 9000 - Telecommunications

Achieving the above certifications is not a trivial matter; it means that the flex supplier meets certain quality standards and is audited to those standards. The standards require a common discipline from the quality, operations and management functions of certified suppliers

Other Criteria There are many other criteria to consider when choosing a flex supplier. While it may seem like common sense to ask these questions, they can be extremely important considerations.

Is the supplier willing to show you their customer list or share information about targeted markets? The industry and markets that encompass their existing customers is often revealing.

Does the supplier have many years of real experience building flexible circuitry, or are they a printed circuit board manufacturer "dabbling" in flexible circuits?

Is it possible to have a direct link to personnel within the manufacturing facility? Are you dealing with the flexcircuit manufacturer, or is the supplier buying the product and reselling? Touring the facility can tell you a great deal about capabilities.

Choosing the Right Flexible Circuit Supplier - Five Critical Considerations

Critical Things To Consider Before Investing In a Team Collaboration System

In today's interconnected world where more organizations are collaborating with partners and clients, and coordinating virtual staff, online team collaboration solutions have become a 'must-have' to keep everyone on the same page. Trying to juggle communication between partners, staff, clients and other team members through email alone often leads to serious bottlenecks, lost information, and more project lag-time than necessary. Password protected extranets or secure online workspaces offer organizations powerful tools to collaborate online and work more efficiently and effectively.

However, with so many team collaboration tools available today, how do you know which one is the best solution for your particular business or organization? Companies and other organizations that work with clients and teams around the world suggest evaluating three critical things before investing in a team collaboration system:

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How Steep is the Learning Curve?

Many team collaboration tools are loaded with tons of features for added selling points. Oftentimes, these features are more valuable as a 'buzz' factor rather than an actual tool to help teams communicate efficiently. If the project collaboration software is too complicated to use, it can be very difficult to get people on board with using it.

Most people are already busy enough and don't want to take hours out of their week just to learn how to communicate with you. Clients especially tend to get frustrated if they have to adopt a complicated system just to work with you. For this reason, it is essential that the team collaboration project you choose be simple and not bloated with features that aren't essential.

Does the Team Collaboration Solutions Provider Offer Some Sort of Online Training?

The project portal should be simple, intuitive, and not overwhelming to new users. If the project management system is too difficult to learn, you'll find yourself spending a great deal of time training current employees, new employees, and customers how to use it while the productivity of the project itself dives. Regardless of how simple it is, most new users will need some sort of light training on how to use the system effectively.

You could spend hours on the phone teaching employees, partners, and customers where to click, how to upload, and how to interact with the system. Another option would be to create your own training documents or screen-capture videos to send to new users. However, to save yourself more time and frustration, look for team collaboration tools that already have published videos that show new users how to interact with the system. This way you can simply send them a link and new users can be off and running.

How much structure should the collaboration tool have?

There is an inherent trade-off between the amount of built-in structure a collaboration tool has and the tool's ability to be adapted to different groups needs. Some tools have too much structure and hierarchy and it can be confusing to users where to click to find the right document library or discussion group.

SharePoint, for example can be difficult to set up in a way that is intuitive and simple to use for users. It can be packed with features, but if only the most sophisticated users can figure out how to perform the most basic actions, getting users to actually adopt and use it can be a real challenge.

The real value of any team collaboration system is in its ability to keep a team up to date and on top of the latest developments in a project. Nothing can slow a project down faster than when team member B thinks he is waiting for team member A to complete a task only to find that the required task was already complete but went unnoticed.

An excellent online collaboration tool should offer "portals" or workspaces for individual projects and message threads within those projects that different members can subscribe to and receive message alerts by RSS or email. Those who do not need to follow communication on every thread should be able to remain off of that thread to avoid information overload. At the same time, it should be simple and fast to add a new project member to an existing thread if the discussion turns into one that they need to be aware of.

Documents relating to specific projects should be grouped into one place without users having to sift through endless threads to find a particular document. Without this feature, an online collaboration tool ends up having the same problem as email where messages with important files attached become lost in the growing stream of communication. There's a lot of buzz these days about wikis as online collaboration tools. Wikis are collaboratively editable web pages and are great tools for some situations. They are very flexible and allow groups of people to contribute to a shared body of knowledge (e.g. Wikipedia). They work very well for developers and others who need to develop software documentation, frequently asked questions, policies, human resources information, etc.

In some cases they work very well for groups that need to collaborate on projects and activities. However, they are not as good a choice for groups that need to share documents, manage tasks, maintain a shared calendar, and have discussions.

Wikis can be too unstructured. For some groups wikis don't work well for team or project collaboration because they don't provide enough structure. For groups that primarily need to share and collaborate on documents, manage tasks, and have discussions, it can be cumbersome to post these to wiki pages and organize them so others can find and update them later. Some groups should consider an online collaboration tool that has more structure out-of-the-box so that groups can just start using it - documents, tasks, discussions, and news can be posted with one or two clicks and don't need to be organized or managed carefully to keep them from getting lost.

Wikis can take more time to set up and administer. For administrators, some tools that start off with the right feature set in place can often be far easier to set up because they already have an intuitive navigation structure built in. Wikis sometimes require a lot of effort to set up a skeleton structure of pages that can organize the groups content effectively. In addition, less sophisticated user groups often require more training on how to interact effectively with the wiki. This can be a real problem for groups that need to set up hundreds or thousands of workspaces.

In conclusion, there are a number of factors to consider when choosing an online collaboration tool. The most important are simplicity and ease-of-use, strong help documentation and online training, and the right amount of structure to ensure your teams don't need to figure things out for themselves.

Whatever collaboration tool you choose for your organization, they offer powerful and effective ways to help organizations share documents, manage tasks, and coordinate more effectively with staff, partners, and customers.

Critical Things To Consider Before Investing In a Team Collaboration System