There’s a lot of buzz floating around these days, about “Personal Manufacturing.” Screaming Circuits has more than a decade of bringing personal manufacturing to engineers. We pretty much started the category in the electronics industry, so we’re quite familiar – but not everyone knows what personal manufacturing is. I’ll do my best to describe it, and what it can do for you.
The short answer, is that personal manufacturing is building your boards on your terms, not on the terms of some nameless, faceless factory.
The longer answer is probably more useful.
Traditional manufacturing is all about statistics and fractions of a penny. Those factors are important; especially if you’re manufacturing millions. But, when you just need a few boards, or a few hundred boards, those factors can make your job nearly impossible.
With personal manufacturing you can decide when you want or need assembled boards on your workbench. You won’t need to beg for time on a busy volume manufacturing line. In the case of Screaming Circuits, it’s cloud-based manufacturing so you can order online from your desktop, when you’re ready, rather than waiting for someone to pick up a telephone.
With personal manufacturing; you design it, get some prototypes, make a few mods, lather, rinse, repeat. Then, you’ll get a few dozen, few hundred, or few thousand, and start selling. You’ll get what your budget allows and don’t need to commit to minimum volumes, or long-term business. You can polish your design faster, with less hassle, and you can get to market faster, with less hassle. Faster to market and less hassle both mean more time and money for you.
NPI (new product introduction) has never been easier than it is with personal manufacturing. Years ago, I was a product manager at a start-up. The entire NPI process was a nightmare. Our engineers couldn’t get anything built without half a dozen support staff. Someone had to make the documentation usable. Someone had to hunt down sample quantities of parts. Someone had to make sure the board would fit on the volume manufacturers’ assembly line. It went on and on like that, taking up months of the design cycle. We were at the mercy or people who only cared about making their part of the process easier.
Rather than producing the quality product we wanted, our new products would be shipped to customers with mod wires. I recall one board that needed 64 mod operations before it could be shipped. Yes, that was on a released, shipping product.
With personal manufacturing, as Screaming Circuits provides, you can get a few prototypes built right away. If need be, you can modify, and get a few more built at your convenience. When the mode wires are gone, you can build up a hundred and get them out to customers without delay. It’s not about what works best for Screaming Circuits; it’s about what works best for you.
Duane Benson
Right now a personal pan pizza delivered to my desktop would work for me.