Market Environment

As competition has intensified over the past decades, business decision-makers in different sectors of the economy have increasingly adopted industry and business sector specific complex solutions. In an ever-competitive environment, time and cost efficiency has become a clear priority, with fewer and fewer customers wanting to deal with the sub-processes of a particular product manufacture and, where a solution is available, seeking to outsource it.

This change has also significantly transformed the market for electronic products. Two basic trends have emerged in this respect for traditional EMS solutions. The first follows the expectations of international companies, where the organisation and management of processes is usually handled in-house, with the focus on the relationship with suppliers, but where suppliers who carry out the various sub-works can be managed at a high level on the customer side. Even in this case, however, it is expected that a sub-process belongs to a specific supplier, that there is a specific person responsible for the work carried out and that, if additional sub-suppliers are needed, they are managed by a supplier directly linked to the customer. In other words, the responsibility of TIER 1 suppliers has been increased. The other trend is the product manufacturing of smaller companies where, generally for cost efficiency reasons, there are no internal resources to coordinate, control and manage suppliers for sub-processes, so there is an increasing expectation of “one-stop-shop” solutions. This in turn requires knowledge on the supplier side that was not necessary for a supplier in a traditional TIER chain. Complex product management is a knowledge that is acquired primarily through experience. In addition, the development of a very high level professional network is of particular importance, whose members can be moved with security and confidence on a project.

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Complex EMS product management

As the market changes, there is a growing presence of “complex EMS product management” solutions, for which demand has grown exponentially in recent years. The impact has been moreover strongly influenced by impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the electronics sector. Predictability of production, on-time delivery while ensuring a high level of quality, have become a central element of competition. Relations with suppliers have also been affected, and will continue to be affected, by the cost-efficiency efforts of companies and by the associated redundancies. Not surprisingly, one of the clear consequences of any crisis is an increase in the demand for outsourcing solutions, which enables companies to replace fixed labour costs with a temporary cost for the duration of the specific production process, which has a major impact on the final company result. In fact, complex product management can structure and manage the entire production process from the “design” to the production of the “final product”. In EMS this can mean the following workflows:

  • feasibility study,
  • raw material procurement,
  • product sample pre-production,
  • product sample testing,
  • surface-mounted component insertion, soldering, 2D/3D testing,
  • through-hole parts forming, insert soldering, automated testing,
  • selective protective coating (lacquering or siliconisation) of semi-finished electronic products,
  • depanelisation of products,
  • soldering and bonding of products, assembly of various components,
  • production and pressing of moulded parts
  • ICT or functional testing of semi-finished – finished products
  • programming of products,
  • assembling and packaging products.