PCB design is to use EDA tools such as Allegro, PADS, Mentor, AD, etc. according to the circuit schematic diagram for layout and wiring, so as to realize the function of hardware circuit. Excellent PCB design engineers should not only be proficient in EDA software, but also know the circuit principle, SIPIEMC knowledge, have a sense of cost, and consider DFM issues such as process manufacturability of PCB factory and SMT processing manufacturability. High-quality PCB design service is to help customers reduce proofing time and cost, and lay a solid foundation for them to win market opportunities!
Characteristics of PCB design industry in China
China’s preferential policies in terms of labor resources, market, investment and other aspects have attracted the quality transmission of European and American manufacturing industries, and a large number of electronic products and manufacturers have set up factories in China, resulting in the development of related industries in China, including PCB. In recent years, with the rapid development of major terminal applications such as computers, smart phones, electric vehicles, and Internet of Things, circuits are becoming more and more dense, and chip integration is getting higher and higher. Many peripheral circuits of the hardware can do the work inside the chip. Too many reference designs, too many mature hardware solutions, and many hardware solutions are based on the original factory version of addition and subtraction circuits. Slowly, the hardware design is not as complicated as before. On the contrary, with the increasing integration of chips, PCB design becomes more and more difficult. The trend of multilayer board, high-speed high-density board, HDI and arbitrary order is more and more obvious. As the core carrier of electronic products, PCB industry has increasingly strong market demand and higher requirements for PCB design.
There is a serious shortage of excellent PCB designers, and two or three first-tier cities are even worse.
For a long time, PCB design has been the responsibility of electronic hardware engineers. However, with the signal, anti-interference, high speed and high density of electronic products, a shorter development cycle is needed. Hardware engineers in enterprises do a series of work such as scheme design, component selection, follow-up of sample patterns, etc. In order to improve the efficiency of product research and development, PCB design has gradually become a new position since 2000.
As China’s electronic industry is mainly distributed in the first cities from north to deep and wide, which account for more than 90% of the country’s total, the industrial agglomeration effect is too obvious, resulting in a serious shortage of PCB designers in second and third tier cities.
Except for some excellent large companies such as Huawei ZTE, which trained a group of excellent PCB design engineers internally in the early stage, there is still a shortage of excellent PCB design engineers in the market. Under such a background, PCB design outsourcing companies came into being, focusing on this field. After accumulated experience in a large number of projects, a group of excellent PCB design engineers were quickly trained for more than 10 years. At the same time, we have accumulated a lot of research experience in SI signal integrity, EMC and DFM analysis for manufacturability. As soon as possible, the development of PCB design industry still needs a process. At present, there are still not many outstanding outsourcing companies in China.
Although the domestic PCB design industry is facing many difficulties and challenges, the huge market still makes many enterprises invest in PCB. Therefore, considering the professionalism and high efficiency of PCB design companies, many domestic electronic industrial products companies and planning companies choose to outsource some or all PCB design services and let professionals engage in professional work. According to statistics, Tongtai Electronics completed more than 1,000 PCB design orders in 2017. Compared with the same period last year, the business volume in 2016 has more than doubled.
As the “mother of electronics”, PCB is an indispensable link in the electronic industry chain. The important thing is not to say more. According to the feedback from most customers, different enterprises have different considerations when choosing the needs of PCB design outsourcing. You can see the main reason why they outsource PCB design.
Analysis of several reasons for domestic PCB design outsourcing
1. Internal staff is not enough, external resources are gathered together, and some customers have their own full-time PCB design teams. Only when their own resources can’t meet the needs of design progress and design quality will they look for a group of fixed and complementary design companies. The design companies have high requirements, which are recognized by the industry. One of the customers of Taipower’s subsidiary has this demand. The customer is a technical team composed of more than a dozen people, with notebook computers, desktop computers and motherboard IDH. However, the company has a large number of projects, and the staff have no time to deal with so many projects. Because the project time is short, customers also choose emergency services for many projects.
For example, at present, many companies in the market still ask hardware engineers to design PCB, and the hardware engineers have to do the work of hardware scheme/chip selection/single board debugging, etc., which is bound to greatly prolong the time for products to go on the market.
Now, with the development of high-speed digital electronic technology, the requirements for high-speed PCB design are higher: signal integrity simulation analysis, timing analysis, signal reflow, crosstalk treatment, single-board EMC/EMI, power ground plane integrity and power ground bounce effect; Moreover, the design density of single board is increasing, and EDA software tools should be mastered. Serialization of these works has greatly prolonged the time of product development and marketing, but it also does not meet the increasingly detailed requirements of specialization.
In addition, it is difficult to find high-level PCB design engineers in the market at present; Moreover, even if you are recruited, you need to invest a lot of manpower and energy in personnel training. Generally, it takes at least one year to train high-level PCB design talents. And there is no guarantee that there will be no loss of relevant personnel.
Due to cost considerations, they are generally small and medium-sized customers, who have no or only a few full-time PCB design engineers. There are not many projects in the company. It is a waste of resources to recruit 1-2 full-time PCB layout engineers. At the same time, engineers have little room for development and strong mobility. Such companies are looking for designs. At the same time, the company hopes to have a strong and safe company for long-term cooperation, but most of them are price sensitive. Therefore, more and more enterprises choose outsourcing cooperation, but also in order to reduce costs, improve efficiency, open source and reduce costs. We suggest that before choosing PCB outsourcing company, we must know the strength and background of the outsourcing company to avoid unnecessary losses.