Electronics manufacturing services, from first build to volume

Most EMS problems start before the first board is placed. A footprint that does not match the part, a connector with no room for the cable, or a part that goes end of life in six months will stop a line. Our engineers start with the design. Parts availability and alternates are checked early. A second engineer checks every schematic and layout we deliver: the power tree, footprints, connector pinouts and parts against the BOM.

Then the product is built in small numbers before it is built in large ones. The demo build is the first working unit, the one you show investors or film for Kickstarter. EVT, DVT and PVT follow, and our engineers attend each of those builds in person in Shenzhen. Each stage ends with a written report. After PVT you sign the golden sample, the reference unit that production is held to.

Volume runs in the Shenzhen factory, which runs nine processes in-house: SMT, bare PCB fabrication, injection molding, CNC machining, sheet metal, die casting, stamping, box build and test. The engineers who drew the schematic stay on the project when it moves into the factory, so nobody has to learn your product from a hand-off document. When a test fails on the line, the person who reads the failure already knows why each part on the board was chosen. You can start with one board and add the enclosure, the harness, the test and the box build to the same account when you need them.

They differ in who owns the design. Under EMS or OEM work the design is yours: you supply the files, you own the IP, and the manufacturer builds what you specify. Under ODM work the manufacturer designs the product, or co-designs it with you, and you buy design work as well as production.

Read more on ODM and OEM. In practice the labels matter less than the record. Every service in our catalog declares its alternates policy, its approval milestones and its traceability requirement as fields on the order. On engineering projects, design files and IP are assigned to you at hand-off, and the design source files arrive at each stage gate. On portal orders, ownership is recorded in the approved scope. If you move production later, you hold the files and the tooling you paid for.

You keep the design and every change to it. No component is swapped silently. The alternates policy is a declared field with three settings: no alternates without approval, form and fit alternates allowed with approval, or an engineer may propose alternates. Any proposed change arrives as an itemized revision that you approve, question or decline.

You also keep the production file. Confirmation of the production file before fabrication is a declared option. When you ask for it, production stays blocked until you approve. Files, prices, replacements and approvals stay in your account with their revision history. We sign your NDA before the first call, project files live in private project storage, and production units ship with debug ports locked.

Start with one service and one real order. Configure what you need next, such as a board, an assembly or a machined part. Upload the files privately and submit them for a free engineering review. You get an engineer's findings on your files before you pay.

From there the work grows by adding services to the same account, without a wider agreement. The catalog has 12 separately configured services for this reason. If you have only an idea, start with Project initiation. If you have files, start with Standard PCB & PCBA. For a planned path from first build to volume, read DFM services and our guide to choosing an NPI partner.