Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) – an Introduction

Electronic manufacturing services (EMS) provide design, assemble, produce, and test electronic products.

Electronic manufacturing services companies provide a range of services, including design, assembly, and testing and may be contracted at various points in the project phase.  Some EMS companies require only a product specification to start a new project. Alternatively, EMS companies who specialize in manufacturing services may require the customer to provide the design ready for manufacturing.

Electronic manufacturing services (EMS) activities can be divided into three: design, manufacturing and testing.

Design Services

If you are not familiar with electronic design but you have the capital to carry out such activities by 3rd-party, you might want to outsource the design activities to an Electronic manufacturing services (EMS) company.

Many Electronic manufacturing services (EMS) companies have in-house teams that can support the design of any type of electronic product. As the Electronic manufacturing services (EMS) company has manufacturing capabilities it would be wise to keep things under the same roof and outsource the entire project (e.g. design and manufacturing) to a single vendor.

The design services may include:

• Hardware design
• PCB design
• FPGA design
• RF design
• Mechanical design

Manufacturing Services

Electronic manufacturing services is the key competence of an electronic manufacturing services company. Essentially, it’s a complete turnkey service where the customer sends the purchase order and the Electronic manufacturing services company build his electronic product, test it and ship it to the end customer. Magic!

The manufacturing services may include:

• Producing PCBs
• Sourcing ICs
• Assembly of PCBs
• Housing

Testing Services

Shipping great products to your customers is your quality stamp and eventually your reputation. No one wants to get a malfunctioning product. Therefore, testing services is an essential part of the electronic manufacturing services company.

Testing can be performed in different levels: PCB level and product level. In the PCB level testing, the company will run electrical testing to ensure the ICs are operating as planned. At the product level, the product will be tested like it was at the user hands.