Cost Reduction Removal of Blind and Buried vias and layer count reduction.

This customer had a consumer product. It had BGAs, TSOPs and TSSOPs. There were no obvious problems with this design. We offered to replace the original design (not done by us) with a much cheaper to manufacture one. The original design was an 8 layer board that had Blind vias from layer 1 to 2 and from 7 to 8, and also Buried vias from 2 to 7, as well as through vias from 1 to 8. This meant there were four drilling operations at manufacture. We felt that this was over engineered and re-designed it with 2 less layers and only through vias from 1 to 6. The placement of all components and Board size remained the same.

The result:

The Bare Board costs were reduced by at least 40%.

Testimony

"Cadenergy offered to do a cost reduction exercise on one of our boards. They believed that the design was over engineered and suggested that we would benefit from a redesign with the subsequent cost reductions in manufacture. We were sceptical at first as this is not a high volume product and cost savings would have to be substantial to be worthwhile. Cadenergy proved it by supplying a design which greatly simplified the manufacture process with surprising savings. They also managed this without altering the Assembly process."

Buyer, Glasgow.