IntraStage is going to have a booth at NI Week in Austin next week,.
If you’re going to be at NI Week, come by and visit us at booth 526-if you haven’t used our software before, take the opportunity to test out our fully functional demo software. If you’re an existing customer, come by and get some of our giveaways. And we’ll be announcing a new addition to the IntraStage software catalog, so check that out and the accompanying iPod contest.
It’s a daunting challenge for a Contract Manufacturer (CM) to aggregate and report data to a customer. Typically, they have to use manual labor to take the appropriate data, parse it into their system, and manually crunch the data (using Excel sheets or similar tools) to generate the report. The man-hours necessary from technicians, management and analysts can quickly add up and the labor costs can eat into the profitability of the contract.
In the next few years, the ability to provide on-demand test data for review and analysis will provide contract manufacturers with a more compelling partnership proposal, especially in comparison to other CMs which don’t offer their customers with visible, clear test data. Those that do offer data and teamwork to the customers will have the upper hand in proving the quality and efficiency of their labor, equipment and processes to prospective and current partners. To all our CM managers: how much nonproductive time do you spend aggregating data for your OEMs?
Although there has been much talk about (and some hype perhaps) on the recent affect of the Japan earthquake on the electronic supply chain, it hit home for me when I was visiting an OEM Electronic Manufacturer this past June. They talked about how some of their components like oscillators and capacitors etc which were normally sourced from Japan manufacturers were now needing to be sourced from secondary and tertiary suppliers. Although of the same general specification, these parts turned out to be of inferior quality, causing failures when cycled over temperature or under corner conditions of testing. This has forced this customer to focus on more extensive testing and qualification of supplier components.
Maybe if the OEM customer received the quality data on those incoming parts, they could do their own analysis of where things are breaking down between incoming quality and what they are actually testing. An interesting article on the effect of supply chain components from the Japan Earthquake is here: http://www.ebnonline.com/author.asp?section_id=1096&doc_id=207372&itc=ebnonline_gnews