Take a batch of PCBA I recently produced for customers as a typical example. The whole BOM contains more than 50 categories and about 300 electronic materials, and the processing capacity is 100 sets, which means that about 30,000 components need to be purchased. This number looks scary, but most of them are patch resistors and capacitors, and the cost of these materials is almost negligible compared with chips.
According to the initial profit cost estimate, I need to reduce the cost of a single set of materials to less than 150 yuan, but unfortunately, the price of a 3.0HUB chip originally only in 30 yuan rose to 95 because of shortage, which suddenly disrupted my original plan. How to reduce the extra 60 dollars in those days has become my main goal. Of course, there are still many ways.
My first method is to search all electronic material platforms, then compare the prices of all materials with each other, and then search the lowest price of materials in three years. I want to explain here that general electronic materials are divided into current materials and previous materials, and the price of new materials will naturally be higher than that of old materials. Through the previous processing experience, from the point of view of practicality and performance, there is almost no difference between materials within three years. It is more cost-effective to choose old materials for small and medium-sized batch products.
The second method is the selection of alternative models of components, which needs people with certain technical background to operate. It would be great if you happen to be a designer. As a designer, in the process of designing circuit principles, I first choose components according to the principle of maximum performance margin. For example, the output of a power chip is 3.3V, and the theoretical input is only greater than 5V. I will design the front-end circuit according to the input standard of 10V, which is also to ensure the reliability of the circuit in the case of sudden high voltage input. However, when the power input is not extreme, we can reduce the size and use other low-cost and packaging materials.
Through the above two steps, under normal circumstances, you will easily achieve cost reduction, but if we can take a step forward, we may achieve some unexpected benefits, one of which is the centralized procurement of commonly used materials. We will evaluate the shipment last month and the planned shipment next month, and concentrate on purchasing some low-value consumables, which will further save some expenses and procurement time. At the same time, under the background of the current shortage of electronic materials and the rising price of chips, we will accumulate some common materials without a rainy day.
Of course, some companies are used to transferring a lot of work to agents or traders and adopting the principle of packaged procurement to reduce the purchase price. However, quantity and cost need to be evaluated. According to my understanding of traders and agents, for small-scale materials, the fees they charge are relatively high, and there will be some problems at the invoice tax point. For example, a trader takes goods from other countries and issues a 13% ticket to the other party. Then prepare all the materials and sell them to the terminal purchasing staff. They will increase the bill cost of 13% on the basis of the original purchase price, plus the profit and management expenses. The final price will be much higher than the original price, so my point is that it is worthwhile to do more work and spend more time looking for material procurement channels for small batch products.