[Industries]

Electronics Manufacturing

Trace a board back to the date code on every part, hold the inspection record that proves its workmanship class, and schedule SMT against real capacity.

WorkCell TeamPublished
Overview

Electronics manufacturing software earns its keep the moment a customer asks which date code of a part went into which serial number, and whether that board was inspected to IPC-A-610 Class 2 or Class 3. WorkCell keeps that answer as a by-product of running the work order rather than as a separate documentation exercise. Receiving captures the manufacturer lot and date code, issues to a job preserve the link, and completions assign serial numbers, so as-built genealogy is a query instead of a reconstruction. Versioned bills of material carry the revision the board was actually built to, operator terminals record quantities, scrap and inspection results at the line, and the same database schedules placement, through-hole and test against real capacity.

Contract electronics manufacturers and EMS providers, plus OEMs building their own printed circuit board assemblies, cable harnesses, box builds and finished electronic products in high-mix, low-to-medium volume.

Standards You Are Audited AgainstAll Standards
StandardWhat It Requires
ISO 9001The quality management baseline most EMS customers audit against, covering identification and traceability, nonconforming product, and corrective action.
RoHSRestricted substances in electrical and electronic equipment must be kept below threshold, which in practice means holding a declaration for every part number you buy.
REACHSubstances of very high concern above 0.1% by weight must be declared through the supply chain, so candidate-list exposure has to be answerable per part.
IATF 16949Automotive electronics work adds PPAP submission, lot traceability of safety-related subcomponents, and a defined reaction plan on nonconforming output.
ISO 13485Medical electronics adds device history records, component traceability to the finished device, and controlled change to the build configuration.
TraceabilityManufacturer lot and date code through board serial number, with as-built genealogy per unit

A reel is received against a lot that records its manufacturer part number, date code and the supplier it came from. Issuing it to a work order keeps the link, and completing the order assigns serial numbers. A failed board in the field resolves backward to the exact component lots on it, the operator who ran each operation, the inspection results recorded against it, and the bill of material revision in effect at the time. When a part is recalled or a counterfeit escape is suspected, you get the affected serial list from a query rather than from a week spent in receiving logs.

Documents You Have To Produce
Workmanship inspection record

Inspection results captured at the operation against the IPC-A-610 class the customer bought, with the assembly revision and component lots already attached.

Certificate of Conformance

Generated from the job record, tying the shipped serial numbers to their component lots and completed inspections.

Supplier substance declarations

RoHS and REACH declarations stored against the part and the receiving lot, so a customer substance question is answered from the system rather than from an email thread.

Nonconformance and corrective action record

Severity-classified nonconformances with disposition and the 8-D corrective action that closed them, linked to the job and the serial numbers involved.

What Gets In The Way
Component traceability stops at the part number

The system knows you bought a resistor; it does not know which reel, date code or manufacturer lot went onto which board. When a part is recalled or a field failure points at one date code, the containment list is assembled by hand from packing slips, kitting sheets and memory, and nobody is confident it is complete.

Inspection results live outside the job

AOI logs sit on the machine, in-circuit test results export to a share, and the visual inspection sign-off is a tick on a paper traveler. Nothing joins them to the serial number that shipped, so first-pass yield is calculated monthly from a spreadsheet instead of being visible per operation.

Moisture-sensitive parts are managed on trust

Dry packs come out of the cabinet, the bag gets opened, and the floor-life clock starts running in somebody's head. J-STD-033 floor life is measured in hours for MSL 4 and MSL 5 parts, and an exposure that quietly exceeds it produces delamination nobody finds until the boards are populated.

Mixed-volume schedules break on shared constraints

One line, one oven, one test fixture, and forty jobs that all want them. A static spreadsheet plan assumes the stencil is free and the kit is complete when the job arrives. Neither holds, so a shortage on one part number silently pushes three other customers' delivery dates.

What WorkCell Does
01

Lot and date code traceability through the build

Receiving records the manufacturer lot and date code, issues to a work order preserve the link, and completions assign serials. The genealogy comes from the transactions themselves, so nobody maintains a parallel kitting log to prove it later.

02

Inspection, nonconformance and corrective action in one loop

AQL sampling plans and inspection templates drive what gets checked and to which class. Failures raise a severity-classified nonconformance, systemic ones escalate into an 8-D corrective action, and the whole chain stays attached to the job it came from.

03

Versioned bills of material and routings

Every bill of material and routing carries a revision and an effective date, so a board built two quarters ago still shows the structure and process it was actually built to. Changes supersede rather than overwrite.

04

Finite capacity scheduling across the line

The scheduler plans against real machine and labor capacity instead of pretending it is infinite, and proposal runs let a planner test a sequence before committing it. When a part slips, you see which deliveries move before you promise anything.

05

Shop floor terminals that capture the record

Operators clock on to an operation, record good quantity, scrap and defect reason, and enter inspection results at the line. The yield number and the cost record come from the same entry, so nobody does the paperwork twice.

06

A REST API and webhooks for test data

Test and inspection results from your own equipment can be posted against the job and serial through the API, and webhooks push events out. There is no packaged AOI or in-circuit tester driver, so this is an integration you build or we scope with you.

FAQ

What is ERP software for electronics manufacturing?

It runs quoting, purchasing, inventory, scheduling, production and quality on one database, with component-level traceability and inspection records treated as first-class data. The difference from general ERP is that a board's as-built genealogy and its workmanship record are part of the transaction, not a separate spreadsheet.

How far down do we have to trace components on a PCB assembly?

As far as your customer's contract says, which is why shops argue about it on quality forums. WorkCell holds the manufacturer lot and date code at receiving and carries it through issue, build and serial assignment, so you can trace to the reel whether or not a given customer demands it.

Can WorkCell hold IPC-A-610 Class 2 and Class 3 inspection records?

Yes. Inspection templates define the characteristics and the acceptance class, results are recorded at the operation, and failures raise a severity-classified nonconformance. WorkCell is not certified to any IPC standard and no software is; it holds the records your certified operators and procedures generate.

Does WorkCell track moisture sensitivity level floor life?

Not as a packaged floor-life timer. You can hold MSL as an item attribute, track dry-pack stock by lot, and use QC hold states to quarantine exposed parts, but a J-STD-033 exposure clock with automatic bake triggers is not built. Say so early if that is a hard requirement.

Can we see first-pass yield per operation?

Operators record good quantity, scrap and defect reason at each operation, so the inputs for first-pass yield exist per step rather than per month. There is no live AOI or in-circuit tester integration; equipment results reach WorkCell through its REST API or by operator entry.

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