All,
We went "live" with Odoo in April. One area that has continued to be challenging is how to handle Printed Circuit Board Assemblies (PCB's or PCBA's). We typically buy the boards and electronic components and store them in our inventory but then have a contract manufacturer assembly them for us. We struggle with doing this efficiently, even using the subcontractor function. I know other ERP systems also require some "creativity" to get this to work well and I was wondering what others have done and what are some best practices.
A little bit more background information is below.
Printed Circuit Board Assemblies (PCBA)
PCBAs are different from typical assemblies. A PCBA consists of a custom circuit board with various electrical components mounted to it. The circuit board itself is typically custom-designed and purchased from a vendor specializing in custom circuit boards. The electrical components, which are mounted onto the board, are generally off-the-shelf parts sourced from Digi-Key, Mouser, or directly from manufacturers.
Since we do not have the capability to solder components onto the circuit board in-house, we send the custom circuit board and the off-the-shelf components to a contract manufacturer (CM) for assembly. In most cases, it is more cost-effective for us to purchase the components ourselves, keep them in stock, and then ship them to the CM along with the circuit board.
Electrical components can come in different types of packaging. For example, a capacitor or resistor may be supplied on a tape, a reel, or other packaging formats while still being the same part. The CM needs to know the exact packaging type for each component. We need a simple way to communicate this information to the CM when ordering PCBAs. Additionally, we need the flexibility to update this packaging type with each order, as our inventory may include the same component in different packaging formats.
One challenge is that packaging types are not always quantity-specific. For instance, a component supplied on tape could contain 5, 10, 20, 23, or even 100+ units, depending on what the vendor provides and what we have in stock. The same applies to reels. The CM will use what they need and return any unused components to us. Sometimes there is scrap components and more than what the BOM called out is used. This is a big pain point for us right now, how to keep track of and receive components back from the CM.
